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isr O T E s 



FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT 






7 
NOTES 



PLYMOUTH PULPIT: 



FROM THE 



/ 
DISCOUBSES OF HENEY "WAED. BEEOHEE 



WITH A SKETCH OF MR. BEECHER AND THE LECTURE BOOH, 



BY AUGUSTA MOORE. 



<SSR^R^OfC(^g^^ 



EIGHTH THOFSAKD. '-C' ,iA^' ' 



NEW YOEK: 
DERBY & JACKSON, 498 BROADWAY. 

1860. 

I 






EitTXRED according; to Act of Congresa, in the year 18S8, by 

DERBY & JACKSON, 

fai the Clerk'8 Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern Distrkl of N*vr York 



W. H. TwaOK, Stereotyper G«o. Rwmkll & Co., Printers. 



rUBLISHEES' NOTICE. 



This volume is published not only without prepa- 
ration or revision by Mr. Beecher, but he is ignorant 
of its entire contents, having seen neither the copy 
nor the proof. In withdrawing his objections to 
the publication of it, Mr. Beecher was influenced by 
the same generous motives which prompted him to 
give to others than himself, the benefit of his previous 
published works. It is believed that the editor has 
faithfully caught the spirit of the living, breathing 
words, as uttered by the pastor of Plymouth Church ; 
and that her work will be received with acceptance 
by the public. 



INTIIODUCTOUT , 



The Notes contained in this volume are chiefly from 
memory. The most of them were written during the 
years of 1 856-7 — and were committed to paper simply 
because it was impossible to think of, or to write, any- 
thing else with a mind so fully possessed by the memory 
of the sermons from which they were taken. 

Mr. Beecher is not responsible for the contents of this 
volume. There is no pretension that the Notes are 
verbatim. Whether they are, in tone and spirit, like 
him^ the public will judge. But, because a thing is writ- 
ten here, it must not be said to Mr. Beecher, '* You 
said that thing," unless he chooses to own it. In repeat- 
ing from memory the sayings of another, it is very 
likely that errors may occur. Meanings may be modified 
or colored by the mind through which they pass. 

And yet the writer has tried faithfully to give the true 
sense, and, as far as memory would assist, the exact 
expressions of Mr. Beecher, 

It is not the beauty of Mr. Beecher's expressions, nor 



XU INTKODUCTORY. 

the startling and resplendent flashes of his thought that 
this book will show, so much as his presentatiou of simple 
and holy truth, in such guise as never fails to interest and 
instruct all whose notice is gained. And thousands who 
cannot be induced to peruse long sermons, will cheerfully 
read, and undoubtedly remember the vital truths illus- 
trated and enforced in the following pages. 

The volume is a testimony to the power with which the 
mind from whence it sprung influences other minds, and 
of the nature of that influence. 

A. M. 



CONTENTS. 



A 

A Sketch of Henry Ward Beecher , xxiii 

A Christian like bread 266 

Acorns and young ministers 61 

Actions based 'on feelings 46 

A fool's part 187 

A general question 228 

A grave for trouble 28*7 

A great contrast » 106 

Ahab and Naboth 262 

All Christians should be preachers 284 

All men writing books 51 

All truths not to be spoken in one age 99 

A man better than a king 176 

A man of war 229 

Answered prayers 224 

Anxiety for friends ^ 147 

Applying the knife 192 

A prophecy of the future 155 

Aristocracy destructive to piety , 273 

A singing church » 148 

A sound life the best theology 276 

Asps and butterflies 35 

Assurance of faith , 256 

18 



XIV CONTENTS. 

B 

PAGB 

Balm in nature for sick hearts 100 

Battlefields of the world 53 

Bear your weight on God 40 

Best way to teach truth 277 

Be sure of the path 260 

Betraying Christ to rhetoric 181 

Be true to virtue, honesty, and piety 266 

Boys in the limbo of vanity 42 

Blue sky in Wall street 250 

Bright days and dark ones 276 

Brown, Brothers & Co 189 

C 

Ctilvinism the safeguard of freedom T 83 

Camping on ^e edges of sin 105 

Carrion natures 39 

Casting one's care on Christ 26 

Change of motive and purpose instantaneous 291 

Christian graces not in the Bible • . . 283 

Christians not required to give up the pleasures of this life. . . 77 

Christians must learn to bear prosperity 92 

Christianity should rule in politics 226 

Christianity too shallow in churches 73 

Christ and the woman of Samaria 71 

Christ pardons before rebuking 30 

Christ spoke most to the poor 71 

Christ the foundation of Christianity 180 

Christ the standard of perfection 239 

Christ to have all. 26 

Climbing hills 285 

Come up hither 148 

Commentators 170 

Common things dearest to Christ. 73 

Conscience rotting 45 

Creation's centre jewel 186 

D 

Dark lighthouses^ 114 

Deac&u^s office 189 



CONTENTS. XV 

PA6B 

Dead 270 

Death God's call 274 

Declaring God's whole counsel 52 

Descendants of the Jewish bigots 278 

Difiference between a Christian and a worldling 220 

Discontent 66 

Doctrines 177 

Doing evil by proxy 267 

Don't expect other people's experiences 222 

Don't fret .^ 66 

Duty of rejoicing ,y, 157 

Dyspepsia of books /; . . 41 

£1 

Earnestness confounded with solemnity I 280 

Easy working better than much working J. 172 

Election and reprobation J 238 

Emasculating religion J. .... . 203 

Encouragement to young Christians. l 280 

Escapeless gaze of the Almighty 235 

Equal evidence of design for pain as for pleasure in this world 151 

Extremes meet in a common blunder ... 198 

Excitements in religion right and desirable 214 

F 

Faces 1*62 

Fall of bad men final 113 

Falsehood in love 271 

Fiddles, men not 154 

Fighting faults 154 

Figul-e of the wheat. 64 

First love not best 41 

Flies of humanity 160 

Flower stores of Paris .' 146 

Frozen ship and the Spirit of God 108 

G 

Giving one's self for another 210 

God willing to give good gifts 25 



XVI CONTENTS. 

PAOB 

God, honor towards 29 

God feels our conduct 30 

God works by means 198 

God the servant of man 230 

God*s glorv his goodness 219 and 234 

God's hatred of slavery 85 

Godship of Christ 26 

Good advice 195 

Good and bad women c 261 

Gospel, two views of the 25 

Grace must be burnt in 172 

Grace, nature blossomed out 166 

Graces growing ripe 168 

Gradual growth of Christian character 212 

Grain at the end of harvest 34 

Greed and covetousness 268 

Greedy for wealth 83 

H 

Happiness not the end of life 159 

Hatred man's strongest capacity 183 

Hardness good for men 277 

Head faith and heart faith different 274 

Hell in the heart 235 

Hell real and necessary 104 

Heroic women 188 

Hidden troubles worst 233 

Horror of death 194 

Hours like sponges 104 

How to think of heaven 64 

How conviction sometimes comes 146 

* How to test the truth of Christianity , 58 

How men glory , 244 

How they should glory 244 

How men are prepared for usefulness . 279 

Human nature should shun dangerous passes 274 

Impoverishing the soul for the sake of gain , 238 

In danger men call on God 168 

Infidels are working for God 209 



CONTENTS. XVll 

PAGB 

Infidels and fixed laws 206 

Influence on social intercourse of a belief in the immortality 

of man 41 

Is conscience our punisher ? 252 

J 

Journals the devil's vanity trap 88 

Journal of God • 95 

Judge not by appearances 237 

Judging of Christians » 60 

L 

Lecture room, the xxxix. 

Life a concatenation 41 

Lightning rods 234 

Living in Gethsemane 45 

Living altogether in the affections unsafe 61 

Longing for life 156 

Look out along the banks of life 154 

Loving God in Christ — studying a picture , 81 

Loving men makes them ours 4*7 

Love to God the only right motive of action 106 

Love the only ground of perfect union 1*78 

Love's labor — ^basket making 82 

M 

Make God to suit your need 205 

Making a dead letter of the Bible 243 

Man not required to understand God's mysteries 174 

Mean conversions 269 

Measuring by God 83 

Meeting in heaven 217 

Men not to be judged by Sunday conduct 250 

Men must be more than indexes 73 

•Men too refined for God 51 

Men of one idea 44 

Ministers should mingle with the masses " 76 

Mirth the wine of life 222 

Monday versus Sunday 112 

Morality a short cable 17S 



XVlll CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

Morality compared to a ship 219 

Most dangerous sins 37 

Most expected from those who have most 291 

Motives not always required to be unselfish 27 

Mourning garments 47 

N 

^atural faculties blossomed * 62 

No creature so impotent as man 276 

No defining classes of feelings 41 

No happiness apart from God 36 

No man can do another's work 79 

No man can live unto himself ^ . . 177 

No quiet for the soul of man 273 

No religion in the Bible ^ 167 

Not afraid of a laugh 270 

Not good to see too much of men 99 

O 

One virtue 164 

Only the hopeless may hope 236 

Opposing ideas of Christianity 256 

Oregon pines 66 

Our actions afiect God's happiness 29 

Our churches growing pure 228 

Our faculties interpret God 283 

Our hour of rest 230 

Outward and occasional morality 85 

P 

Pain purifying 162 

Passages from prayers 296 

Paul's conversion 50 

People not apt to confess besetting sins 189 

Perfect love 34 

Persecuted, but not forsaken 160 

Phonographic report of a prayer 302 

Pictures for eternity 213 

Planting seeds by singing » 148 



CONTENTS. XIX 

PAQB 

Poor and rich saints contrasted , 94 

Prayer T. 67 

Praying into nothing 114 

Praying tone ' 295 

Praying too long 295 

Preparation for prayet 296 

Prodigality of God 183 

Pushing the rock the wrong way 110 

R 

Raphael's transfiguration. 249 

RcaUty of God's love 231 

Reason like a telescope ._ 42 

Reckoned with the children of God 225 

Refined, yet unchristian 43 

Reformation not religion 105 

Religion, a need of the soul 37 

Religion the briad of life 275 

Religion the warp and woof of life 168 

Rehgious and family affection compared 100 

Religious controversies , 277 

Remarks respecting a new church i . . 243 

Rest on the promises 26 

Revelations 85 

Ridicule, men impervious to 30 

Right between the right persons 233 

Right doing should be involuntary 251 

Right living more than abstaining from sin 115 

Right sort of prayer-meeting 93 

S 

Security of trusting spirits 285 

Self-will prevents conversion 107 

Sentimental goodness 278 

Scruples of good men in regard to the indulgence of taste for 

the fine arts 95 

Short of provisions , 113 

Sight of a rifle 291 

Sins like undermining worms 89 



XX CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

Slaveholder's letter 165 

Some doubts never settled 40 

Sorrows like clouds , 53 

Sowing seed on a windy day 227 

Strength equal to your day , 163 

Submissive in the affections, but rebellious in business affairs, 

when troubled 241 

Suffering rightly borne 42 

Summer smiting on the store-house of Autumn 255 

Sweetest natures soonest soured 97 



Taking up the cross 91 

Tear ringing in heaven 28 

Tears often telescopes 52 

Test of a good institution 279 

The church not God's only instrument. 278 

The devil's cloak , # 187 

The family the most important institution 97 

The grave a window into heaven •.♦..% 44 

The law a battery. Ill 

The leaf in a whirlpool 67 

The man of your counsel 282 

The moral pirate 232 

The preacher's a painful business 63 

The prosperous voyage 218 

The question in the air 165 

The slave and the diamond 223 

The sportsman 226 

The theatre 157 

The vanished years 191 

Things that money cannot buy , . . , 261 

Thin souls 113 

Thoughts and reasonings of children — Satan catching wicked 

boys — Andy Chandler, the old Negro servant, etc 199 

Time a beleaguering army 274 

Tormenting one's self with the memory of repented sins 188 

Truth equilibriated 114 

Truth that leaves false impressions ..••...... 288 



CONTEN^TS. XXI 

PAQB 

Truths that take hold 2'7'7 

Turning the helm 109 

U 

Uncurrent coin. 248 

Undermined towers , 231 

Unkind words like pins and needles 90 

Unselfishness the surest way to happiness. ...... c 46 



V 

Virtues of the moralist , 71 

Volcanic natures , 39 



W 

Waiting for conviction of sin 146 

Warning against Plymouth Church 286 

Water-logged by fear 113 

Weak love 275 

We shall know of the doctrine , 242 

We want to be converted 227 

What is the testimony of your life ? 262 

What repentance is 263 

Which crimes ruin most 40 

Whittling out prayers 43 

Who is wise 173 

Whose are the sheep ? 259 

Who should pray 292 

Why the world was made what it was 279 

Wickedness worse in God than in man 222 

Wisdom and modesty to be used in expressing even our right 

opinions 1*79 

Wolf-like sin 30 

Woman's yearning for love 82 

Woman more godUke than man 46 

Words are bubbles 187 

Words of Christ 81 



XXll CONTENTS. 



PAQB 

Work out your own salvation 110 

Worst spectacle of this country 204 



Y 

Ye would take away my Lord 117 

Z 

Zigzagging to heaven ,.•..*.. i (••.....>..... 269 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

When Henry Ward Beecher is dead, there will be 
made a great effort to learn just how he looked and acted, 
as well as just what he said. 

And perhaps it will fall out, in his ease, as it has in 
regard to many others of renown, that with much labor 
and with heavy cost, men shall succeed in discovering 
nothing very definite or reliable. 

It is easy to enumerate the points in a man's personal 
appearance, if that were all. Mr. Beecher is of medium 
height, is full in flesh, has a strong, well developed frame ; 
every organ is active and healthy. He has full command 
of his limbs, which are pliant and supple as a child's ; his 
body is as elastic as an india-rubber ball, and handled 
by him with about as much ease as he would toss about 
a ball. His face is full and fresh ; his eyes large, expres- 
sive, and blue — sometimes grey ; his forehead is square 
and broad, his hair brown, and worn long ; his glance 
quick, keen, and discerning ; his smile humorous and 
pleasant. 

Who, now, that has not seen the man, can tell how he 
appears to the eye that actually beholds him ? and who 
can ever gather from such points the endless variety in a 
man's appearance ? 



XXIV HENRY WARD BEKCHER. 

To describe Mr. Beecher^s mind, there are not half a 

"dozen writers in the country who could be trusted ; and 

only the pen or the brush of a master could do anything 

like justice to his mere physical maa. Would that there 

/might arise, betimes, some efficient limner. 

Like the mountains of which Mr. Beecher delights to 
talk, he has numberless diverse moods and aspects. Like 
them, he is sometimes cloudy and obscured ; and some- 
times, like them, he stands out bold and clear, in the full 
light of noon. 

Never was human face more variable ; of no one that 
ever lived could it more emphatically be said, *' On differ- 
ent days he looks a different man.'' 

At one time, and in one mood, his face is red, his eyes 
dull and half covered with the swollen flesh of the heavy 
lids. There is no brightness to be seen about him ; no 
briskness of motion, no erectness or strength of posi- 
tion. The animal nature has gained temporary ascend- 
ency over the spiritual, and an enemy might be expected 
to describe Mr. Beecher as an unrefined ploughboy, 
or a butcher in a minister's clothes, or rather, in a 
minister's desk, for Mr. Beecher's clothes are not minis- 
terial. 

But let the enemy wait until he sees our mouniaiu in its 
more usual aspect. Let him wait until the strong, and 
perhaps somewhat rough and rugged intellect has stirfed 
itself, and arisen for action, till the torpedo-like heart is 
on fire, till the fervid words burst forth, and the face, but 
now so dull, begins to shine with the interior glory. 



HENEY WARD BEECHEK. XXV 

Then comes the transfiguration I The material shrinks 
from sight, and the spiritual beams forth, causing in his 
countenance a change almost inconceivable. His face 
assumes all the rich softness of a mezzotint engraving — 
round, fair, and dimpled you now perceive it to be ; and 
its whole expression becomes pure and elevated, almost 
like the angels' faces that we have seen in dreams. 

His forehead is white and high, and shines like the 
brow of a sun-touched mountain ; his eyes beam clear and 
mild, now with the strength of the man, again with love 
and innocence, like the eyes of a babe ; his close-shaven 
chin, and the lower part of his cheeks are shaded, as if by 
the brush of an artist ; there is no longer a rugged line, 
or a rough look about him, his aspect is altogether noble, 
beautiful, serene. 

This, until he stands forth as Boanerges, and then he is 
the. mountain in a winter storm. Mingling in his tones, 
are heard reminders of the cataract, and of the crash of 
thunder ; while his flashing eyes and changing features 
have upon you the effect of lightning, and his gestures 
represent the rushing wind. Then, while you are yet 
thrilling to the sweep of the storm, you are melted to 
tears by some sorrow, or some longing, started into 
new life by the magic tenderness of tones silvery 
Bweet. 

Mr. Beecher's Toice alone is a wonderful power. It 
mingles in its various utterances, all loud, and wild, and 
awful tones, with the sound of fairy harpstriugs, and the 
chime of bells. It has the high battle-call of the trum- 



XXVI HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

pet or the clarion, and all the touching gentleness of a 
mother's cradle hymn. 

A man whose voice combines the three sorts of power 
with which the three following sentences were spoken, 
has in his possession an engine fitted to move the world : 

" When they come forth from their graves — when 
from mountain, from valley, and from the dark waves of 
the sea, they lift up their blanched faces to their Judge 
they will be speechless." 

" Butterflies, the interior spirit of rainbows, sent down 
to salute those kisses of the seasons on the ground- 
flowers." 

"Women, who have such need of love, ought not to 
find it hard to come to Jesus Christ, and put their arms 
about his neck, and tell him, with gushing love, that they 
give themselves, body and soul, into his keeping." 

What has been said and written of Dr. Chalmers' pul- 
pit appearance, manners, and diction, reminds one very 
forcibly of Mr. Beecher. As plain " in dress and gait " 
as was that celebrated preacher, and as impressive in 
discourse as he, is the subject of this sketch. Alike in 
plainness of speech, in intense earnestness, in quick and 
deep emotion, in apt and striking imagery and illustration, 
are the sermons of these two men — Men. Alike, in 
the sermons of each, when at full flood, deep calls unto 
deep, spirit speaks to spirit, and the hearer almost forgets 
that he yet wears the veil, and dwells amid the false and 
deceptive scenes of the flesh. Often it seems as if the 
judgment were already set, and the hearer there. Few, 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. XXVll 

indeed, are the preachers who have power to strike di- 
rectly to the heart, to lay hold with such forcible and 
tenacious grasp upon the moral sense, as does Henry 
Ward Beecher. Every man's soul may be reached in 
some way, and Mr. Beecher knows the open path. Let 
that man who does not wish his conscience roused, his 
nerves thrilled, and his tears started, keep away from the 
genuine and impassioned power of truth, as presented — 
as thrust in upon men's souls, by Henry Ward Beecher. 

A cold, polished, cynical man of the world, going one 
evening, at the invitation of a lady,* to Plymouth Church, 
remarked upon his way, "I go to hear Henry Ward 
Beecher with the same feelings that I go to witness the 
performances of Burton." 

The sermon that night, though not one of Mr. Beecher's 
greatest efforts, was a powerful one, appealing to man's 
own consciousness of sin and ill desert ; every word told. 
There was no escape. It was extempore, only the heads 
thoroughly analyzed and accurately worded, being written 
out. The speaker's logic, at which the visitor had seemed 
inclined to sneer, was perfect ; and his presentation of 
the truth was truly appalling to all out of Christ. 

The face of the gentleman who thought he was going 
to be amused that evening, belied his feelings if he was 
amused. 

The aptness of Mr. Beecher's comparisons ; the acute- 
uess with which he lays the knife to what Tieeds cutting ; 
the unexpected descents which he makes upon errors of 
thought and conduct, frequently excite irresistible laugh- 



XXVUl HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

ter. From this fact, those that lie in wait seeking how 
they may harm him, have represented him in the light of 
a clerical bujBToon, Nothiog can be more entirely or 
malignantly false. He is as far from levity and irrever- 
ence as those who purposely malign him are from noble- 
ness and honesty. Gravity sits upon him with a native 
grace. 

But his imagination is so rich and strong, his flow of 
language is so great, and the heart that beats like a great 
hammer in his breast, is such a volcanic heart, so impetu- 
ous, so prone to overflow, that he does sometimes lose the 
reins of prudence. He is occasionally like a man who 
has struck his foot so hard against a stone, that, to save 
himself from falling on his face, he needs must run awhile, 
though every step be upon vipers. The temperament 
which God gave a man must be considered in judging of 
him ; and considering that of Mr. Beecher, also the mul- 
titude of things that he has said, and is forever saying ; 
and the pressure of the various extreme excitements which 
are upon him ; it is a proof that he possesses a remark- 
able share of discretion and common sense that he has 
said so few imprudent things as he has said. 

Mr. Beecher is frequently humorous, both in tone and 
expression, when he is altogether unaware that he is so. 
It is conceded that, great as is this orator, and nobly as 
truth and earnestness are stamped on all that he says and 
does, that master as he is of gesture and expression, there 
still is hovering about him somewhat of the ludicrous. 

Certain notions he has which always incline one to 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. XXIX 

smile. The wag of his head when he is about to clinch 
an argument ; the shake of his elbows and his knees, 
when he knows that he has you penned ; the eager- 
ness with which he seizes upon that devoted handkerchief, 
when he is about to " charge ;" the strength with which, 
as he commences his tilt, he squeezes it (turning his hand- 
palm towards his chair and back towards the desk, leaning 
on knuckles and thumb, one foot crossed over the other, 
and supported upon its toe) ; the force with which he throws 
it from him, as he comes forward to close in the conflict 
he has waged ; are all mancEuvres certain to be repeated, 
almost constantly; and one cannot avoid being amused 
by seeing them so unconsciously, yet energetically, per- 
formed. 

Although Mr. Beecher himself seldom appears to be in 
much haste, there is always an air of being in a hurry 
about his clothes and his hair. They manifest inten- 
tions of going forward, whether he goes or remains 
standing still. His neck is so short that he never ven- 
tures a standing-up collar. This, probably, in considera- 
tion for his ears. 

One very remarkable singularity in his face is the utter 
incongruity between its front and its side views. Upon being 
told that he resembled Henry Ward Beecher, a relative 
of that clergyman replied, laughingly, '* I know that I am 
said to look like him ; but 'tis such resemblance as a sheep 
bears to a lion." Now the fact is, were that humble- 
minded relative of the famed " Lion " a great deal more 



XXX HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

like a '' sheep " than he considers himself to be, he might 
still bear striking resemblance to his cousin ; for though 
when he turns full towards you, in the heat of discourse, 
Mr. Beecher frequently does present the appearance of a 
lion, it is next to impossible for a person of an imaginative 
turn of mind to view his jprojik without being strongly 
reminded of ovine faces, seen and perhaps loved, in the 
days and the years gone by. 

The timidity of the sheep is not there ; but its long 
favoredness, its serenity, its gentleness, and modesty of 
expression, most certainly are. His face is mobile to the 
last degree : to the play of his features there appears to 
be no limit. There is not a feeling of the heart that he 
cannot strongly express without the utterance of a word. 
And his strong, well-knit and flexible frame is an engine 
for action than which no mortal never need desire a 
better. 

The question is sometimes asked, is Henry Ward 
Beecher a handsome man ? Don't you ask it, reader. It 
is a question that cannot be answered. Can any one 
think those heavy eyes, that indescribable nose, those 
pouting, I-don't-care sort of lips, that tumbled hair, that 
boyish face, handsome ? Not very easily. But^ can we 
call that glowing eye, that soul-lit face, those eloquent 
lips, and that royal brow, ugly — homely ? Impossible 1 
Let the question rest. 

When not in ** a brown study," Mr. Beecher's manners 
are the most free and genial that can be imagined ; but 



HENRY WAKD BEECHER. XXXI 

every year seems to render him more and more abstracted. 
People are sometimes hurt and offended by his indifference 
and forgetfulness of them, when he is utterly unconscious 
of all outward things, intent upon his next sermon or lec- 
ture ; for he makes his sermons in the streets, in stores, in 
lumber yards, on ferry-boats, or wherever he may chance 
to be. And it is plain to be seen, that a man in the midst 
of sermon making, cannot be very thoughtful of his man- 
ners to those who chance to pass or to pause beside 
him. 

It is said that a polished and courteous. brother cler- 
gyman one day called on Mr. Beecher ; and on being 
shown into his study, found him stretched upon the floor, 
from which he made no haste to rise. ** I am studying 
my sermon," said Mr. Beecher, looking steadily and 
gravely into the fire which burned before him. 

On one occasion it was thoiight needful that Mr. 
Beecher should be waited on by a committee of ministers, 
in order that they might reassure themselves and the 
churches of his sound orthodoxy. When the object of 
their visit was stated — " Let us pray," said Mr. Beecher 
instantly — ''let us pray ;" and the prayer, if we mistake 
not, settled the matter satisfactorily. 

The children like Mr. Beecher — that shows what his 
nature is. They all love to speak to him, to play with 
him, to hand him flowers. They crowd his pulpit stairs ; 
the boys gather almost about his feet. After meet- 
ing one spring evening, while Mr. Beecher was talking 
with several gentlemen, upon some apparently important 



XXXU HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

business, a little rosy-faced girl stepped on to the plat- 
form, and holding out a bunch of white and red clover, 
said : '' Here, Mr. Beecher." He instantly bent towards 
the child, and taking the flowers, said in a pleased tone, 
and with a kind smile : " Thank you ; these smell like the 
country." The child looked perfectly delighted as she 
darted away. The mystery and secret of Henry Ward 
Beecher^s wonderful success as a preacher, may be ex- 
plained in his own words, which he applied to another : 
*' He preaches life-truths in life-forms, with the power of 
his life in their utterance." 

He is not a greater man, not a more learned man, not 
a better man, than many other ministers who never can 
keep people awake. But he is more alive. Why ; there 
is intense life in all that, in desk or pulpit, he does or 
says. What wonder that he who is so vivid there should 
sometimes sog and smolder, when the excitement of his 
work is over. 

Many excellent Christian people, growing anxious lest 
the preaching of a man whose influence must necessarily 
be so great and wide should be pernicious, take long jour- 
neys for the object of satisfying themselves of the truth 
of the matter. Hardly a Sabbath passes in which several 
of these intent and anxious faces cannot be seen, narrowly 
regarding the minister, as, all unconscious of them, he 
delivers his message for the day. 

Although every now and then, such good people get 
some remark which causes them to look a little doubtful, 
their faces clear before the sermon is over ; and when the 



HENRY WAED BEEOHER. XXXllJ 

final prayer is ended, and the final hymn sung, they go 
away praising God for the good that he is accomplishing 
through the instrumentality of the man whose influence 
they had feared. 

The whole country knows that the singing of Plymouth 
Church is Congregational, It knows also that some of 
the hymns sung there are those that are forbidden to 
many orthodox and dignified churches. But too great a 
price is often paid for dignity. Not all the dignity on 
earth is worth the feelings with which the thousands of 
that great congregation, standing up -together, sing joy- 
fully the hymn commencing — 

" Amazing grace ! how sweet the sound," etc. 

and its chorus (in which even the children join) of 

" Oh ! that will be joyful to meet to part no more." 

and then listen to the parting blessing of their pastor — 
*^ And until that blessed day, to which he is bringing us 
on, may the blessing of God be with us ; and the glory 
shall be given to the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
Ghost, Amen." 

No man can be truly great whose central life-purpose is 
to be great. Selfish ambition is certain death to those 
principles which give men immortality. Love to God, or 
love to man, or both of these, must lie at the foundations 
of all true fame. For the sake of preaching the Gospel — 
^the Gospel of redemption and of freedom — Henry Ward 
Beecher lives; for this sake he would die. This is his pur- 



XXXIV HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

pose ; and into this work he throws all that there is in 
him, and all that he, by seeking throughout the height 
and depth of life, can obtain. 

That he has stood — that. he is standing — where the 
temptation to pride and self-conceit is strong, he knows 
well; and with all his heart he has besought the Lord to 
keep him clothed in the garments of humility. Year 
after year the multitudes throng him; they press around 
him, till the place that holds him is too strait for them. 
They hang upon his words, they love him, they revere 
him. The man is not deaf nor blind ; his heart is not a 
stone, and it needs no philosopher to say that in his posi- 
tion only the grace of God can keep a man humble, and 
without any affectations of vanity. The Lord has heard 
the prayer of his servant. The " Mountain " knows that 
it^ is high; the ** Lion " knows that he is strong. It would 
be mere affectation to deny that; but through he has pro- 
per self-respect, it is well proportioned and justly com- 
bined with self-abnegation. No man forgets himself more, 
or regards himself more soberly, than does Henry Ward 
Beecher. 

This is the opposite of what was feared in the beginning 
of his course. 

Ten — eleven years ago, when first people began to 
talk of the great numbers Henry Ward Beecher was 
drawing, there were remarks like the following made : 

'* It's a new thing; people will run after novelties.^' 

" It won't last long, depend on that. These young 
guns burst suddenly— vanity charges them too heavily.'* 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. XXXV 

" Oh it's more the name of Beecher than anything 
else." 

*' He is the tail end of the heap ; he never would 
study." 

" Any man that has tact and boldness, and that knows 
how to swell, can draw a crowd for a while." 

And Eev. Dr. Shepard, of the Theological Seminary 
in Bangor, Maine, remarked, " If Mr. Beecher continues 
to draw so large a congregation for six years, he will 
prove himself a remarkable man." And now, having seen 
how the matter turned, that heroic divine (heroic in the 
fullest sense of the word, for men who would not fear to 
die in battle, or to risk life in other ways, often lack hero- 
ism to stick to their post when moTiey beckons them away), 
who excels as scholar, preacher, and critic, has become a 
hearty approver and admirer of Mr. Beecher. It needs 
no more than this to show that the feet of the pastor of 
Plymouth Church stand on firm and solid ground. 

He has his faults, and they are numerous, and not too 
small to be seen with the naked eye. Perhaps the very 
reason why he so admires gentleness, is because he has 
not in his own disposition overmuch of that quality. But 
of his faults there are sufficient who are ready to speak, 
and to rejoice in them. Well, as he says, " There always 
will be persons who have in them the carrion nature." 
Such as their pastor is, with all his glorious powers, or 
with reactive dullness, with all his virtues, and with all 
his faults, his people love him. 

They have, however, one cause of regret in regard to 



XXX VI HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

him. Mr. Beecher is a sound and vigorous man, physi- 
cally ; but he cannot last always — he, as well as others, 
must die ; and where is the material that shall live after 
him ? that shall show to the future world what a man once 
lived and died ? He is now forty-six years old, and not 
yet are prepared the witnesses which shall speak for him 
after he has gone hence. Full measure, pressed down, 
running over, has his life ever given ; but will he be of 
their number whose dying is but an endless multiplying of 
their life ? His sermons, matchless as they are, are sel- 
dom fully written out ; and no mortal hand but his own 
can properly retouch them. Hitherto, he has not, except 
in one or two instances, given to the, world proof of what 
he is. In his pulpit — on his own platform — he is seen and 
known — known to such as have listened to him often — for 
no man can judge of Henry Ward Beecher from one or two 
sermons. No crystal was ever so many sided as he; all sides 
so bright and pure ; but abroad, where he goes to lecture, 
they neither see nor hear him. Oh I that his platform 
had a tongue I or better, that it knew to use the pen ; then 
would be manifested, before all the world, the splendor 
and the power ; the yearning love, the crushing wrath, 
the thunderous denunciations, the resistless appeals, the 
originality, the logic, the analysis, the heroism, the phi- 
losophy, which render this man unsurpassed in setting 
forth the truths of the Religion of Christ. 

Henry Ward Beecher came of a goodly stock ; Welsh 
blood, with its poetry and music, flows in his veins. 
He is indeed a poet ; though it is not known that ever iq 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. XXXVll 

his life he made one line to rhyme with another. But get 
him before a fine painting, and see the poetic frenzy that 
comes mightily upon him there. 

He is not much gifted with prudence in the use of mo- 
ney ; and is so generous towards those that have need of 
his aid, that, as a gentleman of his congregation remarked, 
when there was talk in regard to raising his salary : 
'* Three thousand dollars a year is, as far as his own inte- 
rest is concerned, just as good as ten thousand ; for he has 
nothing, now, when the end of the year comes ; and he 
would have no more then." 

Nor are all his gifts public ones. To the unknown poor 
he does good ; they who have sat in great darkness, and 
whom he knew but little more of than this, that they were 
in trouble and want, have known his ready generosity. 
Such persons know that it is from the impulse of his heart, 
and not to gain a name for benevolence, that Henry Ward 
Beecher does good with his money. 



THE LECTURE-ROOM. 



The Lecture-room of Plymouth Church is entered 
from both ends, and is capable of seating about 
four hundred persons. Mr. Beecher's desk stands 
directly before the door at which he always enters. 
Between the desk and the door is a high and wide 
white screen of boards. Towards this screen all 
eyes are directed, from the time the people are 
assembled until the pastor appears. The meetings 
are always well attended — generally they are 
crowded ; and better or more interesting prayer 
and conference meetings there are not. People 
flock to them with a real, living pleasure, which is 
printed upon their features. A sensation of glad- 
ness is always experienced when the pastor's face 
appears. 

Taking his' seat, Mr. Beecher gives out a hymn, 
and then calls upon some brother to pray. This is 
three times repeated. The hymns are not read, 
unless one happens to strike with peculiar force the 



TTnrj-y 



XJ THE LECTURE-ROOM. 

pastor or some brother ; or unless it set to ringiDg 
some "silver bell" in Mr. Beecher's heart; in 
which case he reads it, in his own touching man- 
ner. 

After the third prayer the meeting is open for 
remarks ; and speakers are heard from various 
parts of the room. The brethren make known 
an experience, a want, or they ask a question. 
Anything practical the pastor is glad to hear. 
" Anything," as he says, " that has life in it." 
And when one takes into consideration the 
transcendent prayer and conference-meeting apti- 
tude of the pastor, it is really astonishing with what 
freedom the most halting and uneducated persons 
rise up, and unabashed before him, express their 
minds, and open their feelings. 

Strangers attending the meetings are prone to 
think that, after hearing the pastor talk, no one 
else would dare to open his mouth. But Mr. 
Beecher's aim is to encourage and draw out the 
humble and stammering disciple^ and in this he suc- 
ceeds to admiration. The minister sits smiling in 
his seat, like a loved teacher ; and to him both old 
and young submit any question of duty or of doc- 
ti'ine by which they are exercised. He is faithful 
to warn, exhort, check, or encourage; and his 
power of applying cures to right places seems, 
sometimes, well-nigh miraculous. It is a strange 



THE LECTURE-ROOM. xli 

thing to see old, grey-headed meu arise and ask 
that comparatively young one, of things. too deep 
for their understanding ; and stranger still is it to 
hear how, without a moment's hesitation, the young 
one pours light upon the whole subject, while the 
inquirer sinks to his seat silent and satisfied. 

When a man stands up and begins, after a dead 
and formal manner, to make a long, set exhortation 
upon generalities, he is very liable to be requested 
to alter the tone of his remarks, or to make them 
brief. That brother will be liable to be asked if he 
thinks his religion renders him any more amiable 
than he was; if he is any more agreeable and 
patient in his family, any mo.re merciful and just 
with his clerks, any more upright and humble in 
every part of his life. Such home thrusts are useful 
in bringing people down from that convenient 
generality that we '^ are all great sinners," from 
reflections and remarks that hit no one, and help 
no one, and they fasten attention on particular 
points where attention is needed. 

But while canting exhortations and heartless 
prayers are thus discouraged, the most trembling 
lisper who really has a thing to say, and don't un- 
dertake to speak or pray merely from " a sense of 
duty," is kindly heard. If a timid beginner in the 
prayers and the language of Zion, break down in 
the midst of his utterance, instead of the dead 



Xlii THE LECTURE-ROOM. 

and awkward, the half killing silence, made appal- 
ling to the stammerer by exchanged glances and 
nods, perhaps, also, by smiles from those present, 
the word is instantly taken up by the pastor, or by 
some brother, and the distress of the young convert 
is covered and cured. 

Any one who has ever witnessed such scenes as 
have taken place within the last year, in some con- 
ference meetings, will know how fully to appreciate 
the delicacy and skill of management like this. 

People accustomed but to solemn faces^ in prayer- 
meetings, are frequently shocked at seeing a smile, 
or hearing a sound as of subdued laughter, go 
round the lecture-room of Plymouth Church. Well ; 
the charge that people laugh there cannot be de- 
nied ; they do. 

But tho laughter of levity, or of trifling with 
things sacred, is not that which Mr. Beecher's re- 
marks excite, and he holds the strange belief that 
man was made to laugh, when he feels like it, even 
in the presence of God himself. And if there is a 
man or woman with a face so stiff as not to smile, 
or laugh outright, at the sudden and skillful hits 
made by Mr. Beecher at various faults and errors, 
surely it is not one that would be welcomed every- 
where with love and joy. 

Laughter thus caused has oftentimes more power 
to send an evil into annihilation than twenty 



THE LECTURE-ROOM. xliil 

years of grim and solemn argumentation would 
have. 

A nickname well applied can paint a man better 
than any brush of artist. " Go tell that Fox^'^ says 
Jesus, and what labored description could set He- 
rod more vividly before us ? 

It is a fact that Mr. Beecher cannot keep his face 
to that devout measure and expression which those 
who gravely censure him, so holily wear. 

The people smile at their pastor, and at each 
other, and he smiles at them. Thus there is 
sunshine at evening there. Anon they look at 
him with falling tears, and his own eyes fill, and 
the tears roll down as he speaks of Christ's love and 
pity, or of man's ingratitude. Certainly, if it is 
better to suppress all such signs of feeling, it is 
more painful, and those who sit side by side un- 
moved, while are poured the prayer, the song, the 
entreaty, cannot love each other as they do who 
have, in their meetings, looked through smiles ana 
tears, through sorrow and laughter, into each other's 
very hearts. 

Since the coming hither of Dr. Lyman Beecher 
the meetings have often been more interesting 
than ever. He stands like a glorious old ruin, 
speaking of tlie good days of the past. And he 
utters a few words more of love and invitation to 
the world before he leaves its shores forever. 



Xliy THE LECTUEE-ROOM. 

How ardently he loved his work ! how he loves 
it now! 

One night the subject of remark during con- 
ference was ^' Looking unto Jesus." Mr. Beecher, 
with his usual power, had illustrated this looking, 
by the looking of a child towards its parents, a 
soldier to his officer, etc., and had then proceeded 
to show how much greater encouragement one 
would take by looking unto Christ. Said he, " 'Tis 
hard to make people habitually do this, but far 
harder to cause them to realize that Jesus is actu- 
ally always looking upon them. I think that more 
Christians, and the same one for a greater number 
of times, take comfort by what they do towards 
the Lord, than by what the Lord does towards 
them. We know that we do, sometimes at least, 
look upwards, lovingly, confidingly ; but that he 
looks down on us with real, throbbing love, we 
can't seem to believe that. There are many rea- 
sons why this seems impossible. Our own con- 
sciousness of ill desert, our meanness, our coldness, 
our entire unloveliness, all appear to stand in the 
way of our being objects of love to him. Yet it 
was against this very feeling that he aimed his dis- 
course in the chapter whero he asks if an earthly 
parent will give his child a stone for bread, or a 
serpent for a fish, etc. We say, " Oh, of course, an 
earthly parent would not deal so ; he must love his 



THE LECTURE-ROOM. xlv 

offspring, but God is different ; he is so far off, so 
much above us ; there may be reasons why he 
cannot regard us." 

Nay, but Christ twists the argument the other 
way, '' If ye^ being evil, know how to give 
good gifts, etc. Is it because your child is good, 
and does all things to please you, that you give of 
your fullness to him ? Or is it because he is your 
own^ and you love him ? Now you reach it, that 
is the manner of feeling which God has for all 
who once and heartily have given themselves to 
him. But don't you think that your poor, un- 
steady and imperfect love is more true and endur- 
ing than his. Out of his infinite goodness his love 
flows to us 5 the reasons for it are in his own 
nature, not in ours." 

Here the venerable Dr. Beecher rose and said : 
'' I want to say one thing about this looking of God. 
There must always be something to look at." 

He sat down. It was plain that the watchful 
Father in Zion feared that, from some omission in 
his son's remarks, the ignorant and foolish might 
take occasion to think, " We will do evil that love 
may abound." 

Mr. Beecher had been sitting in his chair, as his 
manner is when he speaks often, and but a few 
moments at a time, in the meetings ; but now he 
rose and moved aside his table. Bending forward 



xlvi THE LECTURK-ROOM. 

over the edge of his platform, he said, "I should 
like to know what He saw to look at when he so 
loved the world that he gave himself to die for it. 
When a man's back is towards God, and he is hat- 
ing him, I don't think that God ever sees that man's 
face. Even for such persons God's love is compas- 
sionate, though it cannot be the peculiar affection 
one feels for his own child ; but the moment that 
the man's face is turned towards God, the love of a 
father to his son is but a feeble sign of the infinite 
tenderness with which the Almighty Father regards 
him. It is the world that needs to be reconciled, 
not God." 

"That is just what I meant," said old Mr. 
Beecher. 

'' I knew you did, father ; but I wanted them to 
understand it in my words too." 

At another time. Dr. Beecher hearing a blind 
brother, who rather inclined to the doctrine of per- 
fection, make some remarks to the effect that the 
way of perfection was the way of peace, remarked : 
"If we are to have no peace, and no sense of justi- 
fication, until we do love the Lord with all our 
heart, and soul, and strength, and until we are 
conscious that we are free from offences, no man 
who knows his own heart can ever have them. The 
love of God is with his children the paramount 
love, but never, till they get to heaven, will it be 



TEE LECTUKE-ROOM. xlvii 

all that the comraand requires. Measuring our- 
selves by the law of absolute perfection, every man 
falls short every day. There are two sorts of per- 
fection by which God's creatures stand : one, the 
perfection of absolute obedience ; the other, the 
perfection of faith. By the first the angels stand, 
by the last stands man. Faith is counted to us for 
righteousness. Faith is shown by love and good 
works, but both of these are imperfect, and 
accepted only for Jesus' sake." 

" My father," said Henry Ward, " is like an old 
war-horse. They say that he has served his time, 
and they shut him into a rich pasture to take his 
ease for the rest of his days. But he wonH take his 
ease ; he scorns it. "When the trumpet sounds the 
pasture cannot hold him ; he leaps the fence, and 
takes his old place in the ranks, marching with the 
rest until the parade is over. And you cannot keep 
father away from the work to which his life was so 
freely and earnestly given." Again he said : " My 
father has made his journey and reached the shore ; 
but he is waiting for a little time before he crosses, 
to call back to those that are still upon the way, 
and to tell them of the things that shall make their 
journeying less toilsome and dangerous. He will 
go over soon." 

" I waited to see one more revvodl^^ exclaimed 
the old gentleman in a lively tone. " I have seen 



Xlviii THE LECTURE-ROOM. 

it — a glorious one. It is the beginning of the end. 
God will show vou neater thino;s than these. In 
the four churches over which I was pastor there 
were four years of revival. Kevivals never ought 
to stop. I am willing to wait twenty more years 
if I can be permitted to work in a revival." 

The glad times during the great revival of 
1857-8 seemed to renew the youth of Dr. Beecher. 

*' This meeting," said Mr. Beecher at one time, 
"is the bellows which keeps the fire going, yonder 
in the Great Congregation. I am sure that more 
depends upon it than upon the Sunday service — at 
least without it the preaching would be. almost 
powerless. This is a pleasant place — we all love it. 
I think that we can say, that here we have spenl 
some of the happiest hours of our whole lives.'* 



NOTES 

FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 



There are two views of the Gospel. Ijotli of which 
some churches use. 

One view of it is, that it is a power which makes 
laws for the protection of all men who will quietly 
yield up their rights, and submit themselves to 
what will inevitably crush out of them their man- 
hood. 

The other view is, that the Gospel is a power 
which secures to man all the inherent rights of 
his nature, and which protects him in them. 

The first view regards men as mere passive bricks 
for the building of the palace of society, which is 
considered the important thing. The latter view 
considers society as the school for training indi- 
vidual men.* 

Man is the most important thing created on the 
earth. Eulers, societies and systems are but his 
servants and protectors. 

The churches are welcome to which one of 

2 25 



26 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

these views they like best. Thej shall not have 
both. I take the latter side, and declare that those 
who don't believe in it had better stop sending out 
Bibles. They had better stop ministers, at any 
rate such ones as I am ; for I preach 'knowing that 
the Gospel is a bombshell in the midst t)f thrones, 
and a mine beneath every fortress of power whose 
strength is used against the people's rights instead 
of for them. 



Take from the Bible the Godship of Christ, and 
to me it would be but a heap of dust. I would as 
soon have all Egj^pt raked into a heap, wherein not 
a stone of its cities, nor a trace of its inhabitants 
could be found, as that book if its Christ be not 
God. 



Man is required to pour all that is in him — all 
of his life and love — into the bosom of Christ ; and 
when that is done, what is there left for God ? 



The man who, after having cast his care on 
Christ, goes to fretting and worrying himself about 
anything or anybody, is like one who, having pur- 
chased a through ticket from here to — anywhere, 
and receiving a check for his baggage, gets out of 
the car at the end of a mile or two, and, shoulder- 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 27 

iug his trunk, starts to go the rest of the way alone. 
Christ never rolls back upon us burdens that we 
lay on him ; we take them back ourselves. 
What is a religion worth that will stay with a man 
in the suushinej but clear out in a storm? The 
Christian has a right, and it is his duty, to be free 
from all care and anxiety. Let him lie on the pro- 
mises, and be at rest. '' Oh ! but," says the doubt- 
ing, worrying disciple, " the promises are made to 
the righteous ; and I am so lull of imperfections I 
dare not claim them." Well, brother, if j^ou wait 
for that righteousness which is by the law, you'll 
never be able to rest on the promises ; but if you 
trust in Christ, that is counted to you for righteous- 
ness I and your right to the comfort of the promises 
is as good as though you were as holy as an angel. 
Christ's love sweeps away the unworthiness of all 
who sincerely love him. God has undertaken for 
you ; trust him, though you know not where to get 
your next supply of bread. 



That Christ does not hold men to proper and un- 
selfish motives when they come to him for healing, 
we may see by the cleansing of the nine selfish and 
ungrateful lepers. He knew their dispositions and 
motives, as well before as after he had granted their 
prayer. God allows men to cry out to him from sel- 



28 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

fish fear ; and he never refuses to attend to any earnest 
cry. If he did not attend to such cries, or receive 
such persons, whom would he receive ? Dare any 
man lift up his face and say, "When Z cried unto 
God, I cried worthily, from pure and disinterested 
motives." The conditions are not " Come with pure 
hearts and motives unto me ;" they are " Come, and 
your motives shall afterwards be made right." A 
true conversion will do that work. Nothing else 
will. If you are awake to your danger, if you see, 
at last, that your only hope is in Jesus, don't stop 
to examine your motives, or his willingness to 
receive you just as you are. Hush to his feet this 
moment. All that you cannot do, he can and will 
do. All that you now have to do is heartily to 
come. Drop every hope and every dependence but 
Christ, and give your whole life and soul into his 
keeping. 

A TEAR, dropped in the silence of a sick chamber, 
often rings in heaven with a sound which belongs 
not to earthly trumpet or bells. 



God is more willing to give good gifts unto them 
that ask him, than men are to give them unto their 
children ! God could not have struck the founda- 
tion note of human desire squarer than he did by 
this declaration. 



LIVING WORDS FEOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 29 

There is no honor toward God, either in the 
heart of man or woman. Suppose that I dared to 
go into a school and take some young maiden — one 
the least hackneyed in the ways of life, and, calling 
upon her the attention of all her companions and 
teachers, declare that her soul was base, mean and 
vulgar ; that she was without natural affection or 
human feeling ; that she regarded not the good of 
brother nor sister, and that she returned the affec- 
tion of father and mother with ingratitude and con- 
tempt. "Why! she would not for a moment bear 
such charges — she would die — she would suffocate 
with shame. Yet I stand hei;e and I charge upon 
you young maidens, and young men — upon every 
one of you into whose eyes I look, if you have not 
given your hearts to Christ, conduct infinitely worse 
than this ; because 'tis towards one who is more to 
you than any earthly friend can possibly be. I 
charge upon you the meanest, the most base and 
unnatural conduct that can be imagined ; but you 
sit calmly under that^ you look me in the face and 
do not blush, and not a feeling of shame stirs in 
you, solely because this atrocious behavior is main- 
tained towards God ! 



I THINK that the outreaching of God's heart of 
love has more power in it than the beating of God's 
mark has. Love is mightier than indignation. 



30 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

It makes a difference to God how we act. His 
happiness is affected by the conduct of his child- 
len; for his heart is the heart of a father. If, 
when my child sins, a pang goes through my own 
fioul, and I fly to rescue him from further iniquity, 
it is because God struck into my breast a little 
spark of what in him is infinite. 



Some men are, in regard to ridicule, like tin- 
roofed buildings, in regard to hail — all that hits 
them bounds rattling off, not a stone goes through. 



Christ never stands rebuking before he pardons 
and helps the suppliant. 



God hates sin, because it destroys what he loves. 
He could live high and lifted up above all noise of 
man's groaning — all smoke of his torment ; but his 
nature is to come down after man — to grope for 
him amid all the dark pollutions of sin, and if pos- 
sible, to rescue and cleanse him. 

God hates sin very much as mothers hate wild 
beasts. One day a woman stood washing beside a 
stream. She was in a wild, frontier country, and 
the woods were all around. Her little, only child 
was playing about near her. By and by she 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 31 

missed the infant's prattle, and looking about her 
called its name There was no answer. Alarmed, 
the mother ran to the house, but her babe was not 
there. In wild distress the poor woman now fled 
to search the woods, and there she found her child. 
But it was only its little hody that she clasped to 
her heart. A wolf had seized her treasure, and 
when, at last, she rescued it from those bloody 
fangs, its spirit had gone. Oh ! how that mother 
hated wolves ! ! And do you know that this is the 
very figure Christ uses to show what feeling he 
has towards the sin that is seeking to devour his 
children ? 



When we sin we are not going against a cold, 
unfeeling law; but are striking, with cruel hand, 
direct at the living, loving heart of God. 



'^ This loving God," you say ; " I can't do it. 
How can I love infinity — omnipotence? I might 
as well try to love a cloud, or to try to embrace in 
my warm palpitating aflfections the vast expanse of 
ether." True, you cannot love God — you cannot 
love this expansive, mysterious essence of omnipo- 
tence. God knows very well that you cannot, and 
for that reason among others, he condescended to 
bring himself down to your capacity; to come 



32 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

within the reach of your affections in the person of 
Jesus Christ. "God manifest in the flesh." From 
my soul I pity that man who goes behind Christ 
and seeks to fasten himself upon God unrevealed. 
As you say, he may as well seek to embrace with 
warm love the elastic and invisible air. But it is 
with Christ that we have to do, and if you desire to 
fashion him to your mind that your heart may love 
liim, I will tell you how. Sit down and read his 
/ife — ^not in parts ; not a chapter one day, and 
another the next ; nor a paragraph with your coat 
and hat at your elbow, ready to start for New 
York; but read his life straight through, giving 
your mind and your heart time to take in the 
meaning of what you read. Thus you may view 
him in his loveliness, and your affections cannot 
tail of being touched. If you went into an artist's 
studio to look at the picture of some distinguished 
person of whose appearance you wished to get a 
clear idea, how do you think it would answer to 
have, at your first visit, all of that painted face 
except the forehead, covered ? Looking at that a 
little while, you go away and come again the follow- 
ing day. The forehead is covered now, and the 
lower parts of the face, but the eyes are visible. 
You look at them a few moments and go away as 
before. The next day they give you a view of the 
nose, exclusively ; the next you behold the upper 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 33 

lip; next they give you the lower lip, and finally 
the chin. ]N"ow you have seen the whole face ; but 
do you know how it looks ? l^o, you don't. Tou 
can form no idea of the efi'ect of such a combiua- 
tion of features; you can't imagine what the 
expression of the face is, you don't know it from 
Adam's. Now, who would for a moment put up 
with such portrait seeing? We say when we 
come up before a picture : " Get out of the way- 
let me see the whole effect of this." But it is in 
this dissected manner that men look at the char- 
acter of Christ. Not so do they study Washing- 
ton; nor any other man of whose character they 
wish to form an opinion, and of whose personal 
deserts they wish to judge. Why should Christ be 
so unjustly treated ? Did it ever occur to you that 
there are four lives of Christ, each one written by 
men of different minds, that all forms of minds 
might be suited ? Study those lives hy the whole^ 
and you will find how to love him. 



'Tis not safe for any man, whether Christian or 
not, to measure himself by any other than God's 
own rule. Let him measure himself by God, ^nd let 
him judge of himself by how he looks there. Let 
him hold up in the light of God's word tb^ 
thoughts and intents of his inmost soul. 

2* 



34 LIVING WOEDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

Perfect love casteth out fear. While the heart 
is filling, the agitations of fear remain ; but, when 
the lake is filling by the moon-drawn and star- 
drawn tides, what commotion is there in its bosom — 
how the sands are swept about, how the muddy 
bottom sends its rile through all the waters. There 
are ripples and eddies, and struggling currents; 
there is seething and boiling ; there are bubbles 
and foam, until the lake is almost filled. But as 
the waters deepen, as the banks grow less and less, 
the agitation subsides. The sand settles, the foam 
is blown away, the bubbles are scattered. And 
when the lake is filled to its utmost capacity it 
clears itself, and lies unruffled and serene, refiect 
ing in its calm bosom, the moon, the stars, and the 
tranquil heavens. Thus is it with the heart of 
man. When love ebbs low in his soul he is tossed 
and whirled by the agitations and torments of fear; 
but when the Spirit of God flows in and fills his 
heart with divine love, the tumults are stilled ; and 
looking up with confidence and joy, the man 
reflects from his overflowing soul the image of hia 
God and Father. 



Farmers have learned a lesson which many mo- 
ralists have not learned ; namely, that when seed is 
sown grain must be looked for at the latter end of 
the harvest, and not at the beginning. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 35 

Christ reveals himself unto his own in ten thou- 
sand ways, but often they do not know him when 
he comes. Many times he speaks to them when 
they do not even suspect that they have had a reve- 
lation. They 'dare not think it; they fear that it 
would be a lack of humility to believe that the 
Saviour really has made good his promise, and 
come unto them. When we are burdened and cast 
down, how often does some passage of Scripture 
dart suddenly into our mind, lighting up all our 
darkness like a flash from Heaven? It is from Hea- 
ven. Christ thus reveals himself to strengthen and 
encourage us. We may be beset by sore tempta- 
tions, and just upon the point of yielding, when the 
word of warning comes; or we may be feeling deso- 
late and forsaken, having none to lean upon, and yet 
not knowing how to stand alone, when the revela- 
tion has been of love that passeth understanding — 
of pity deej) as the bosom of Almighty God. I sat 
once under a tree near a little stream, holding in 
my hands a bunch of flowers. Suddenly, from the 
air came swooping down upon them a little bird. 
He had not seen me ; when he did so he instantly 
fled : but he could not take from me the sweet sur- 
prise and the exciting pleasure of his visit. Thus 
comes flying to us the new revelation from our God. 
New in effect, though old in letter. Like the bird 
that only touched me with its little feet and bill, it 



36 LIVING WORDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

may but alight a moment on our heart, and depart 
a& suddenly as it came, but it does its work. As, at 
a touch from some passing thing, the dew-laden 
bushes shake off at morn the weight of the burden 
that has been pressing down all their leaves, so, at 
one shock, do our hearts shake off their burdens, 
and rise up in thanksgiving and joy. 



A MAN who is very much afraid of sins that 
bring immediate shame and punishment, while he 
cares nothing at all for those which are of a nature 
to recur, increase and form character, is like a child 
who should come laughing into a room with his 
apron full of asps ; but be very much terrified at 
being chased by a butterfly. 



There is no enduring happiness apart from God. 
As well might a branch broken from a tree in the 
forest say, " ilSTow I am free — ^I will grow and be a 
tree by myself," as any human soul say, " I will be 
free — I will do as I like and be happy in my own 
way," when he does not draw on God for his enjoy- 
ment. He is a broken bough — a reed plucked up ; 
a waif floating no whither. True happiness he can 
never know until he comes to draw it from its only 
source — God, 



XIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PT3LPIT. 37 

There are sins which, like asps, always carry 
their sting with them. The instant one meddles 
with them, he is struck by the poisoned dart. 
Such sins are generally rare and admitted to be 
very wrong. But there are others that are far 
more dangerous. Men in tropical climates may be 
very much afraid of tigers ; but there are multi- 
tudes of minute insects flying in the woods whose 
bite is death. Shall they be less afraid of these ? 



Men often hunger and thirst after God when 
they don't know what ails them. There is cra- 
dled in every man's soul, though often nearly 
smothered, something which is the child of God, 
ever crying out for its Father. You may say, '' 1 
cast religion, priests and churches overboard ; I'll 
have no more to do with thena, I've seen through 
them, and they are worthless." But you will have 
more to do with them, for when you have destroyed 
the outward forms, the living want will still be in 
you. Religion is not a thing of arbitrary requisi- 
tions it is an inherent need of the soul. The Bible 
and ordinances are but evoked by man's necessities, 
to help him. Tou come to church, you think your 
cheeks are hard, and they are; you think your 
hearts are hard, and they are hard ; you think you 
can resist the dogmas, and so you can ; therefore I 



38 LIVING WO tDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

shall not present them. I won't throw pearls 
before swine, but being crafty, I catch you with 
guile. Many of you are ashamed that you want to 
come here ; some of you go out cursing because 
your hearts are touched. But you come again and 
again. You are what is called gospel hardened ; 
but in reality you are word hardened. You have 
heard the same things presented in the same way 
so long that you are tired of them ; therefore I go 
out of my way to get new forms in which to pre- 
sent old truths. For your sakes I forsake all set 
rules of sermonizing, and strike direct at that 
within you which I know will echo to my words. 
I know that in every man's bosom there is that 
which at times longs for something better and 
purer than he is. At your interior consciousness I 
aim ray thrust. I strike my blow. Those old bells 
in you, I will make them ring. You maj^ turn out 
the sexton, you may cut off the rope. I'll throw 
stones and hit your bells if I can do nothing more. 
To the truth they shall peal out, and your soul shall 
tremble at the peal. 



Journals are often the devil's vanity trap. Men 
write in them pretending to themselves that they 
don't expect them to be published, when all the time 
they know that they will be ; and are writing 
under the influence of that idea. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 39 

In some waters a man may drive strong piles 
and build his warehouses upon them, sure that the 
waters are not powerful enough to undermine his 
foundations ; but there is an innumerable army o^ 
minute creatures at work beneath the water, feed- 
ing themselves upon those strong piles. They 
gnaw, they bore, they cut, they dig, into the solid 
wood, and at last a child might overthrow those 
foundations, for they are cut through and eaten to 
a honeycomb. Thus by avarice, revenge, jealousy 
and selfishness, men's dispositions are often cut 
through and they don't know it. 



There are men who delight to see evil in those 
professing godliness. They doubt, they leer, they 
jeer. Well, there are birds appointed to seek for 
carrion, and they always find it. By their very 
seeking they declare their own nature. Don't you 
imitate their dirty flight. They are of the carrion 
family. 

God values men according to what they have had 
to walk through. Some men are so made that they 
are obliged to hold perpetual warfare with them- 
selves. They must have a hand always on the en- 
gine, or something will blow up in them every 
minute. 



40 LIVINa WORDS FR(M PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

There are doubts and troubles that never can bo 
settled. The only thing to be done with them is to 
lay them down and leave them. This the Christian 
must do if he w^ants peace ; and if the impenitent 
won't do it they will torment him to death. 
That's all he'll gain by clinging to them. There is 
no system by which everything can be made to look 
clear to men while they live in the flesh. As long 
as we live there must continue to be many things 
that to us seem dark and mysterious. It matters 
not. Enough that there is no darkness, no mystery 
which is not clear to God. To him let us trust mat- 
ters, and not take the care of things upon ourselves. 



God will certainly take care of you if you bear 
your whole weight on him. He may not do it just 
in your way ; but he will do it. He cannot let one 
of your real interests perish, or be hurt, without the 
most dreadful perjury of himself. 



Great crimes ruin comparatively few. It is the 
little meannesses, selfishnesses, and impurities, that 
do the work of death on most men ; and these 
things march not to the sound of fife or drum. 
They steal with muffled tread, as the foe steals on 
the sleeping sentinel. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 41 

What a man has thought and felt bears intimate 
relation to what he now thinks and feels. There is 
no such thing as divesting one's self of the influences 
of former living. A man's life is a concatenation — 
he is rolled over and over on himself. 



There are many men who have a dyspepsia of 
books. 



In love, the freshness and charm of youth have 
' caught men's attention, and they have pronounced 
the first love best ; but it is the poorest. One does 
not know how to love till he has felt the discipline of 
life. Young love is a flame ; very pretty, often very 
hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. 
The love of the oldei" and disciplined heart is as 
coals, deep-burning, unquenchable. 



A REALIZATION of the Spiritual nature and the 
eternal duration of man purifies and elevates our 
social intercourse. The clearer a man sees man's 
destination and true life, the more he reveres hu- 
manity as a thing sacred and honored of God. 



I don't believe in definitions of feelings or classes 
of feelings. They can be illustrated — not defined 



42 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

There is a time wlien one is neither one thing nor 
another ; not exactly in boyhood, and not exactly 
in manhood, but in the limbo of vanity. This is the 
time when parents become foolish, and not vrorth 
minding; when the theology of one's childhood be- 
comes bigotry, narrow, simple ; when one yearns 
for largeness, liberty. This is the time of danger. 
Infidelity with dark wing hovers near, and if the 
youth be not now guided wisely and betimes they 
become its victims. Having nayself narrowly es- 
caped this doom, I know how to sympathize with 
those who are in danger. 



Reason is like a telescope — you can arrange it so 
that with it you can see only the things near to you, 
but it has other powers. By drawing it out and 
properly adjusting the glasses, you can make what 
is near you to grow dim, and the things far off to 
come near, and by and by, when the lenses are 
all right, you can see beyond the stars and into the 
heavenly city, and the magnificent background to 
your view is the glory of God. 



Suffering rightly borne weakens that part of us 
that should be weak, and strengthens what sl^ould 
be strong. 



LIVING WORDS FEOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 43 

"Will men's prayers be answered ? Not if they 
pray as boys whittle sticks, absently, hardly know- 
ing or caring what they are about. I've known 
men to begin to pray about Adam, and go on from 
him away down to the present time, whittling their 
stick clear to a point with about as much feeling, 
and doing about as much good as the boy does. 



Eefinement is one of the outworkings of faith in 
the spiritual. It is the lifting of one's self upwards 
from the merely sensual, the effort of the soul to 
etherealize the common wai5ts and uses of life. A 
really refined man who ignores Christianity is a 
creature to beget wonder. A man whose sense of 
color is so exquisite that one wrong shade cannot 
escape his eye, that harmony of hues is his soul's 
delight, I marvel that that man's eye has never 
pierced the blue, and caught the sparkle of the gems 
that glow with matchless dyes upon the gates of the 
eternal city. A man whose ear is all attuned to 
melody, who has brought music to its highest 
earthly perfection, and stands entranced by the 
sweetness of its passing tones, I marvel that he 
never hears the ringing of the harps of heaven. 
And he who has lifted his affections until no touch 
of grossness ever defiles them, who has made them 
pure as crystal from the taint of life's vulgarity, I 



44 LIVING WORDS FTOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

marvel, 'more and more, that along their edges 
plays no fire from the celestial treasury of love — 
that as the lightning from the earth leaps forth and 
joins and mingles with the lightning from the cloud, 
his love is not touched and intensified by the love 
of God. What rapine ! what havoc ! when such an 
one — his life being touched — goes forth, naked and 
alone, to find that he has stopped infinitely short of 
any preparation which could make the happiness of 
Heaven possible to him. 



Men who concentrate themselves all upon one 
point may be sharp, acute, pungent — they may 
have spear-like force of character, but they are 
never broad and round, never of full-proportioned 
manhood; which can only be obtained by the 
carrying forward of the whole of a man in an even- 
breasted march. 



Many a man never sees into heaven, till he sees 
there through the grave of his little child, or till he 
loses his wife, not only the better half, but often the 
whole better part of himself. That unutterable loss 
which darkens the house, which darkens life itself, 
which takes the breath out of the years, and leaves 
a man to go staggering through the world, like one 
smitten at noonday with blindness. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 45 

To some it is appointed to wander in Gethsemane, 
having no variation to their lives except a walk 
over to Calvary. There are faces lifted np to me 
from this congregation, into which I cannot look 
without revelations of their owners' peculiar histo- 
ries, which seem like flashes from another world. 
They sit calm and still before me ; but I know that 
no scorpions or vipers can sting as they are stung 
through every one of their best afiections. Every 
day their tears fall. For years and years they 
have borne this, and yet the}'- can bear witness that 
through faith they have been enabled to endure. 
More ; that though they expect no relief, faith will 
support them to the end. Is religion, then, a fan- 
tasy, v/hen it can so uphold the soul amid all the 
waves of trouble ? I tell you no. Let who chooses 
to do so, swelter in philosophical anguish ; I prefer 
to stand serene upon my Christian faith and hope. 
Tou may scoff at it and call it folly. I tell you it 
is a very comfortable thing to find refuge from every 
distressful and corroding care in the love of God. 



I THINK no man could have his arm rot and drop 
away, from wrist to shoulder, and not know it ; but 
you shall find numberless men whose consciences 
have rotted, from circumference to core, and they 
Know nothing about it. They are less concerned 



i6 s LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

about themselves than when the corruption first 
began. This silence of the hollowing out of a man 
— this noiseless process of preparing him for de- 
struction, is an element of very great fearfulness. 
It fills me with grief and sadness, as I look on men, 
to know that as the snow falls, fiake by fiake, and 
no sound tells of its accumulation — that as the dust 
sifts in, and no noise warns of its choking rise, so 
silently, so- surely, man is heaping to himself wrath 
against the day of wrath, and does not know it. 



She was a woman, and by so much nearer to God 
as that makes one. 



Live not for selfish aims. Live to shed joy on 
others. Thus best shall your own happiness be 
secured ; for no joy is ever given freely forth that 
does not have quick echo in the giver's own heart. 



Every action of the intellect, save that which is 
purely scientific, is based upon some feeling. Am- 
bition says to intellect, '* Look out for me ;" fear 
cries " Look out for me.'' Greed also, '' Arouse, 
sharpen yourself; pierce the darkness, teach me 
how to gain ;" and love cries passionately, pleading- 
ly, ^' Awake, be my advocate, think, think for me." 



LIVING WORDS FROM TLYMOUTH PULPIT.. 47 

Neither I nor my family ever put on the gar- 
ments of mourning. I will not permit it. Yet I 
would not refuse to those who think differently from 
me, the right to change their garnients in memory 
of their beloved dead. But do not borrow of the 
devil ; choose some color that shall speak of hope, 
of release, of victory. Draw not over yourselves 
the black tokens of pollution. Do not blaspheme 
by naming that despair which is triumph and 
eternal life. 



" Therefore let no man glory in men, for all 
things are yours. Whether Paul, or Apollos, or 
Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things 
present, or things to come, all are yours, and ye are 
Christ's, and Christ is God's." This is a wonder- 
ful ownership ; nowhere else in the world is there 
such an one. The time is coming when even to the 
grosser property of earth this will apply ; for the 
heirs of heaven are not to be forever the paupers 
of earth ; but now it is true of all things pertaining 
to the realm of mind. The things our Father made 
are ours, not in the sense of our having any right 
to deprive others of them, but ours as our earthly 
father's home and goods were ours in the days of 
our childhood. Were not our parents, our brothers 
and sisters^ was not the infant sleeping in its cradle, 
ours ? Was not the shelter of the roof-tree ours ? 



• t§ LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

Was not the homestead ours ? Were not the fields, 
the gardens, the trees, the flowers, ours, in the full 
heart-possession, which is the interior, the true 
ownership. Were they not just as sensibly our 
own as though we alone possessed them ? And 
were they not ours because we were the children of 
our father ? And were they any the less ours be- 
cause they belonged to our brothers just the same ? 
If we are the children of God, we are the owners 
of all the good things in the universe. Kead here 
the title ; it has our Father's seal. We read of the 
noble ones, the mighty and holy ones of old, and 
we say : "These men are ours — They know it now, 
for they are where the light is clear, and ere many 
days they will give us loving welcome. 

We stand before the gifted, refined, and noble 
men of our own time ; they do not know or heed us, 
but they are ours, as we are theirs, and soon we 
shall rejoice together in the glad possession. We 
walk among the well-known princes of reform and 
progress. They have an influence over us, that we 
cannot resist — they make us laugh or weep — ihey 
steal our hearts, they direct our thoughts, but ihey 
regard us not amid the crowds that flock to hear 
them. They do not see or know their brothers, but 
we know them right well, and we bide our time ; 
eternity is long — there is no haste there — no over- 
work, no weariness, and no indifference or misinter* 



LIVING WORDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 49 

pretation, and those great, rich souls shall yet ac- 
knowledge and receive ns. We are among them 
now, as a disguised man in his father's house. 
He sees his parents and his brethren, and he is 
happy to be with them, though they know him 
not. He knows them well, and he can afford to 
wait awhile until they discover him. The Christian 
who lives near to God, finds a fulfillment of the 
promise that whoever for Christ's sake forsakes 
aught, shall receive in this world many fold more 
than he loses. But oh ! that world to come ! that 
world eternal which is also ours ! Why should any 
Christian feel himself poor? I believe there is no 
feeling more universal in the human heart than 
that of loneliness. At the outset of life every face 
glows ; every heart has its high hopes, and no one 
thinks much of the insufficiency of the things 
of time ; but when the middle hours of life draw 
on,' not more than one-third of the faces are still 
bright — two-thirds are disappointed and almost dis- 
couraged. When the evening comes, not more 
than one in a thousand carries the light still in his 
eye and on his forehead. The nine hundred and 
ninety-nine have fallen by the way. They have 
tasted the cold selfishness of the world ; their breasts 
and their sides have been pierced by the jagged 
points and the poisoned thorns against which rude 
winds and struggling waves, have dashed them, 

3 



50 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

They have felt the utter insufficiency of human 
help and sympathy ; and it has been well for them^ 
if instead of lying down in the bitterness of despair, 
they have turned for what they so greatly needed to 
the only fountain of availing sympathy and aid. 
'' Alone ! alone !" has been and is the wail of every 
human heart that has not been satisfied by the 
love of God. And the Christian, while on earth, is 
subject to seasons of the same distress, when he will 
feel unknown, unloved, forsaken of his kind. But 
he knows that 'tis only for a moment that his deso- 
lation can endure, and then he will enter where 
all are his, and where they all will own him. Then^ 
when he walks with wings and not with feet, he 
may measure his possessions, and never again will 
his heart be cold, or lone, or sad. 



To some men the mere fact of existence, the 
simple walking through the air and light, gives 
more pleasure than others find in the whole round 
of so-called pleasures. 



Paul was converted as the germ of a peach 
sprouts. It splits its shell clear off, and has free 
room to root and grow. Many conversions only 
crack the shell; and it is worn so long that the 
man's Christian character is stunted and shallow for 
his whole life. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOITTH PULPIT. 61 

To live altogether in the affections is not safe. 
Death will overleap the fold, and bear away the 
precious lambs that are therein ; and then the man 
will go wailing through the world, shorn of all that 
was-life to him. A man's life should not " consist 
in the abundance of the things that he possesseth." 



We are all writing books — histories of our own 
lives, and we can omit nothing, soften nothing. 
Only the naked truth can be marked upon those 
pages. 

Let your sorrows, when they rise and swell, be 
like the waves of the Sound, when they at night 
flash forth their glories of phosphorescent light — or 
like the clouds that reflect the sunlight glorified. 



It is a bad thing to 4ive exclusively in taste and 
refinement. It begets a very wicked sort of selfish- 
ness. The man who lives too much in these facul- 
ties will be perpetually stumbling upon things 
shocking to his feelings, for God forgot to polish all 
the rocks in this world. He didn't make trees all 
smooth. There are a thousand things that he didn't 
put velvet on. It's a pity men should grow too re- 
fined to keep company with God in his provi- 
dences. 



52 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

I WILL declare the whole counsel of God ; I will 
make it tty bear hardest and hottest, and to cast its 
light, strongest and clearest on the most open and 
obstinate sins. I will bring it -down hissing liot 
upon the hydra-headed monster, that many think it 
best to pat and soothe. I will, while the Lord 
spares my breath, cry aloud, and loudest when men 
would fain teach me prudent silence, " Woe unto 
them that decree unrighteous decrees ; that turn 
aside the needy from judgment ; that take away 
the right of the poor; that make widows their 
prey ; that rob the fatherless ; that oppress the 
{)Oor to increase their riches. Behold, the hire of 
the laborers who have reaped down your fields, 
which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth ; and 
the cries of them which have reaped are entered 
into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have 
lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton ; 
ye have condemned and killed the just, and he 
doth not resist you ; but, behold, the judge standeth 
before the door." 



Tears often prove the telescope by which men 
see far into heaven. 



Christian graces are natural faculties which have 
blossomed under the influence of divine love. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 53 

Sorrows are like clouds, which, though black 
when they are just passing over us, when they are 
overpast, become as if they were the garments of 
God thrown off in purple and gold along the horizon. 



Merchants who play at snatch and grab, or at 
pinch and squeeze games, have need to be taught 
the first principles of the Gospel. 



This world is like a battle-field full of little hills 
and hollows ; and to each soldier in the war, the 
small valley where he fights seems the whole, or at 
least the chief part of the field. He cannot see the 
contest on the other side of the hill ; and he thinks, 
in his small judgment, that as go things in his hol- 
low, so goes the whole battle. Thus either his 
defeat or his victory looks to him of far more con- 
sequence than it really is. But God looks at things 
by the whole, and in heaven he will show them so 
to us. When we have fought long in a good cause, 
and have been at last thrown away backward, and 
lie gasping, perchance dying, upon our banners, we 
must not think that the good cause has failed. 
God's work never goes backward. He takes the 
large view of things, and when we are come up out 
of the blood and dust of conflict, he will show it 
to us, and we shall be comforted. For all that I 



64 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

know to be right and good I shall do battle till I die 
For the encouragement and sympathy I have met, 
I thank God. I thank God also for the contumely 
and abuse which bad men have heaped upon me. 
It is no honor to be praised by the selfish and evil 
man, and the oppressor; but I would that my 
brethren, the sons of my Father, my fellow workers 
in the vineyard of the Lord, understood and loved 
me. But in one thing I am superior to my brother 
ministers who call me so bad a minister : I know 
that many of them are good and true men, though 
over careful and moBt mistaken ones, and I know 
that they have, sooner or later, got to own me for a 
good man. They are mine. They cannot help 
themselves. I love all that is good in them ; and 
tliey have got to love me. There is no escape for 
them, "for all things are mine, and I am Christ's, 
and Christ is God's." Does any one ask for the full 
meaning of this threefold heart enshrinement ! 
They cannot have the exposition from mortal lips ; 
but we shall all learn its meaning when we get to 
heaven. 



Once I thought of heaven with the cold rigid 
thoughts of the old teaching. It was a stately, 
solemn, unnatural place, full of everlasting practis- 
ing in music. But now I take the liberty of pro- 
phecy. I see that when the oriental saints, or 



LIVING WORDS FKOM PLTMOUTH PULPIT. 55 

when Christ himself described that glorious place, 
they made use of whatever of earthly beauty and 
glory seemed greatest to those to whom they were 
speaking as images of it. I do the same. Every 
one may do the same. There is in heaven what 
will more than satisfy every mind. As a place for 
studying mathematics it could attract Newton, but 
I fear that I should hardly want to go there if that 
were to be the employment of all. But for my 
nature there will be abundant food, and for your 
natures, too, all various as they are. There is not a 
day passes over me here, that I do not sicken at 
some unworthiness or hypocrisy ; but I think 
"Yonder there can enter nothing that defileth, or 
that maketh a lie." Not a day but that tears 
start to my eyes at the sight of other's tears ; but 
I know that there '* there shall be no more 
sorrow, nor crying." Here, I shrink daily from 
the contact of those that are mean and sordid; 
there, all is noble and generous. Here, I am often 
chilled by want of affection ; there, all is love, per- 
fect and undefiled. Of whatever is most beloved 
by me ; of all that is most grand and glorious ; of 
all that is most warm, winning and deliglitful, I 
can think and yet be sure that I have not risen to 
a tithe of the warmth and beauty of the glorious 
home awaiting the sons of God — the joint heirs of 
Jesus Christ. 



56 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT, 

There is scarce a time when men meet to- 
gether, when they could not, if thej listened for it, 
hear the sharp, shrill singing of ten thousand 
petty lies buzzing around them. Men have vio- 
lated truth so long, that they have come to lie 
almost unconsciously. 



A man's religion is not a thing all made in 
heaven, and then let down, and shoved into him. 
It is his own conduct and life. A man has no more 
religion than he acts out in his life. 



» "Take no thought for the morrow,^^ that is, no 
anxious, fretful thought. Walk through to-day as 
well as you can, a'ad God will undertake for your 
future. When you go forward out of to-day, to 
worry about it, you. are over the fence, you are 
trespassing, and God will scourge you back into 
your own lot. When I have been fishing in a 
mountain stream, I have always found that so long 
as I kept a short line I could manage my fishing 
very well ; but when I let my line run out, the 
stream took it down, and there I was, at the mercy 
of every stick that stuck up in the stream, and every 
rock that jutted out from the banks. I lost my 
fish and I tangled my line ; very likely I lost my 
footing also, and got over head and ears in the 



LIVING WOEDS FEOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 57 

stream. Now, most men have cast out their line 
into life forty years long^ when it ought to be but 
aae day long. In consequence, they are not able to 
manage their tackle at all ; but are pulled after it, 
stumbling first into this hole, and then into that ; 
shipping up here, and slipping down there, strug- 
gling and splashing sijpout in far more distressed 
fashion than the fish at the other end of the line — 
and, as a general thing, there is no fish there. 
Haul in your line ! ! 

Befqre men we stand as opaque beehives. They 
can see the thoughts go in and out of us ; but what 
work they do inside of a man they cannot tell. 
Before God we are as glass beehives, and all that 
our thoughts are doing within us he perfectly sees 
and understands. 



Caution and conservatism are expected of old 
age ; but when the young men of a nation are pos- 
sessed of such a spirit, when they are afraid of the 
noise and strife caused by the new applications of 
the truth, Heaven save the land 1 Its funeral bell 
has already rung. 

Christians who are forever livino: on their own 
experiences, are like a leaf which has got into an 
eddy in the river, where it keeps whirling round 

3* 



58 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

and round in its own track. You shall see it there, 
whirling ; and shall go away and sleep, and in the 
morning you shall come again and find the leaf 
there still. At noon there it is, and when night 
comes it is still nothing but whirl, whirl, whirl. 
"Working, travelling, hard enough, to be sure, but 
making no progress. Now, tet something break it 
loose from that whirlpool, and away it will go, 
merrily down the stream. Too much looking back- 
ward and inward is bad for piety and progression. 



The assertion that the " common people " heard 
Christ gladly, seems to imply that the higher 
.classes cared but little for him. 



The Bible don't pretend to teach fully of any- 
thing save man's lost condition, and of his way of 
returning to God. The truth of it is not a subject 
for logic; it can only be tested by consciousness 
and experience. To test the truth of a Christian's 
experience try the life of a Christian. Go on your 
knees before God. Bring all your idols, bring self- 
will, and pride, and every evil lust before him, and 
give them up. Devote yourself, heart and soul, to his 
will and see if you do not " know of the doctrine." 

This is the only way to examine, and study into 
Bible truths ; and none that ever tried this way till 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 59 

their hearts grew warm with love to Christ ever 
had much trouble about doubting the truths of 
revelation. There are men who are avowedly try- 
ing to get rid of the Bible, and there are other men 
who sorrowfully fear that it must be given up. 
But destroy it, and what then ? 

Why we should be like men who had burned up 
all the wills and title deeds which would have given 
them a large estate — or, like sick and wounded 
men, who had destroyed all the means of relief. 
Suppose that the wounded men in the Crimean hos- 
pitals had raised an insurrection. Suppose that one 
man, having lost a leg, had said to another wlio had 
lost an arm, and to another with a part of his head 
and features shot away: "Come, let us take no 
more of this medicine. Let us put an end to the 
directions and attentions of these doctors and 
nurses;" and suppose that then the poor wretches 
had hobbled up and turned all their kind and skill- 
ful physicians out of doors ;liad ejected Florence 
Nightingale after them, and flung the nurses and the 
medicines, and all the surgeon's instruments out of 
the windows. Would all this have done them any 
good? 

They would thus have got rid of all who could 
have helped them, but while the doctors, and 
nurses, and the remedies and balm for the wounds, 
were all outside of the walls, the wounds and putri- 



60 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

fjiijg sores, the burning anguish and tormenting 
pain would all have continued within. 

But what is a Crimean hospital to this groaning 
world ? this lazar-honse of corruption and woe, that 
goes swinging through the ages to one unceasing 
anthem of pain. Men would make their fate utterly 
hopeless, their damnation doubly sure, could they 
extinguish the only light which can lead them from 
that doom of unrepenled sin, whose horror is that it 
forever gathers blackness as it rolls and rolls through- 
out eternal night. 



There are persons who judge of Christians as a 
man would judge of apples, who should enter an 
orchard and go stooping along upon the ground in 
search of them. He picks up one, a hard, green 
thing, no bigger than a walnut. He bites it ; it is 
sour and bitter ; it puckers up his mouth and sets his 
teeth on edge. " Ha !" he says, throwing the un- 
timely fruit away, ^' I hear them speak of apples as 
being so delicious — I'm sure I don't think much of . 
this one." 

He picks up another which looks yellow. There's 
a hole in it, but he don't know what that means, so 
he bites into it and finds a worm. 

'' Bah ! apples ! delicious indeed !" he cries in 
disgust ; and then picks up a third which is crushed 



LIVING WOKDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 61 

by his touch, for it is rotten. So he condemns 
apples, because he has looked for them upon the 
ground instead of on the trees above his head, where 
they hang ripe, juicy, and luscious, a chief treasure 
of autumn. 

Just so men judge of Christians so long as they 
take for fair samples those that lie rotten on the 
ground. 



The young minister, having just finished his 
course, sometimes says, " Now here 1 am, poor, 
miserable sinner that I am, with the harvest of 
twenty years' study in my brain ; what must I do 
with myself? Must all this learning, must my 
powers and genius be buried in some obscure ham- 
let ? . No ! I must have a field worthy of my tal- 
ents." And so he is found hanging about the -pur- 
lieus of large towns and cities, waiting for vacancies 
in distinguished places. If he gets such a place as 
he thinks worthy of him, he soon gets a hint from 
his own people that he had better go down lower ; 
and then he gets the bronchitis, or is called to a 
professorship, or something of that sort (for people 
will lie like witches about this sort of thing) ; and 
his people will endow a professorship and place 
their D.D. there in order to get rid of him respect- 
ably when he has used himself up on their hands. 



62 LIVING WC IDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

The story that goes out to the world is : "The Rev. 
Dr. So-and-so was called to take a professor's seat, 
and has therefore resigned the charge of his people 
for this new, and in some respects, more important 
field of labor." 

Now, to all in general, but to young ministers in 
particular, does Christ's injunction to take first the 
lowest seat, apply. It is sense and sound philoso- 
phy as well as proper humility to do so. The call 
will be " Come up higher " as soon as the man 
has filled and made to overflow the first place 
assigned him. Learn from nature how to become 
great and strong. Look at the acorn — it is content 
to go into the ground and be covered — it is content 
to lie long in darkness hidden away from the know- 
ledge of all. And what then? Why then it is 
content to be a little germ no larger than a knit- 
tirrg-needle ; and what then ? Why then it goes on 
for a long time striking its roots hither and thither, 
grappling itself more and more firmly into the 
earth, working with all its strength under ground. 
And then ? Why then it is content to be for a 
whole year, a single shoot no bigger than a whip ; 
and for another year it is content to be two shoots ; 
the third to have its shoots grow a little longer and 
be headed by green tips. And for ten years it 
grows no larger than that a man's strength can up- 
root it ; but in fifteen or twenty years it is beyond 



LrV^ING WORDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 63 

the strength of man ; and in thirty or forty years 
it stands aloft — a wrestler with the winds, able to 
iake a hug with storm and winter. In fifty or a 
himdred years, tempests cannot upheave it from the 
earth ; its foundations are as the rock; they cannot 
be shaken. Thus should it be with man. Art 
called to be a scullion or a street- cleaner? act 
well your humble part and you shall soon find 
yourself in one that is higher; but be sure that God 
will never commence for you the work of saintship 
where you are not^ but where you are. Fill full, 
of yourself, the spot where God has placed you; 
grow daily till the place overflows with you, and 
your borders will surely be enlarged. So shall you 
rise upward, step by step, on secure footing, until 
at last you shall sit down in that highest of all 
apartments from which, since its name is heaven, 
none are ever ejected. 



My heart is sick ! I see men going to destruc- 
tion on every hand, and* I have no power to stay 
them. 

What a business is that of a preacher. What a 
calling is that which sends one to seek men's souls 
even at the very gates of perdition, and often 
vainly — only now and then one rescued. If you 
could know what causes lie at the foundation of 



64: LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

tliis and that sermon that I preach here, with my 
soul faint with yearning over this one and that in 
this great congregation, you would not wonder that 
I say I feel crushed, overborne, by the weight that 
is upon me. 

There are some men who are so proud that they 
don't intend to enter the church until they become 
so good that they can confer an honor upon the 
church by entering it. They say, " Look out for a 
striking conversion, and for a high-ton^d, consistent 
Christian life, when I start. I'll set an example to 
those members who are such a dis'^rrace to the 
church that I, sinner as I am, am ashamed of them." 
Ah ! self-deluded man, you never will get Gcd to 
dwell in your heart until it comes out of that proud 
frame. He don't expect you to confer honor on his 
church by entering it, at least not in the way you 
imagine. You have got to go in through the door 
of humility ; you have got to come to that state in 
which you shall forget everything but that you are 
a lost and ruined sinner, and that your only hope, 
as the only hope of a murderer, is in him who will 
accept nothing but a broken and contrite heart. 
The language of a man entering the church is not, 
" I have become so good, that I will now join 
myself to the members of Christ, and thencefcith 
be a pattern to all who know me, and an hono/ t» 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 65 

God ;" it is, " I have discovered my lost and 
wretched condition, and that I am too weak to 
stand alone. I have cast my soul upon Christ's 
mercy, and I beseech his children, if there is any 
strength or safety in the church, to take me in and 
watch over and help me." When you have been 
humbled then you maybe lifted up, but "before 
honor goeth humility." Suppose one went to the 
wheat, as it waved in the field, and said :' " Would 
you like to be made into a loaf for the queen?'' 
" Yes," answers the wheat, " oh ! yes, we should 
like to be presented to the queen," and on it waves, 
swelling with pride at the thought of its conse- 
quence. But the reaper comes, and the wheat gets 
a stroke at the roots and is laid prostrate. " Alas !" 
it sighs, "is this going to the gueen?^'^ But there it 
lies, drying in the scorching sun ; and then 'tis 
drawn to the threshing floor, and bruised and 
beaten without mercy. After this 'tis winnowed, 
and then tied up in darkness and carried to the 
mill. "Is not this almost over?" cries the poor 
wheat, but 'tis poured into the hopper and ground 
to powder. Then 'tis pressed and packed, and that 
is not all. It is mixed with water ; it is worked 
and kneaded; it is subjected to various rapid 
changes, and finally to the process of cutting and 
shaping into loaves. " Ah ! shall I not rest now?" 
sighs the poor wheat. "Tes; now you may rest,'' 



tr(y LIVING WORDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULI'IT. 

says the baker ; and forthwith shoves the loaf into 
a heated oven. When baked, and not till then, it 
is fit to be eaten ; and is presented to the queen. 
If God intends to honor you by allowing you to 
honor him, he will lay you low, he will flail you, 
he will winnow you and grind you, he will knead 
and fashion you, and pass you through the fire ; and 
then you will have discovered what it is needful to 
do with pride. 

Men should all have their feet on the same level, 
with leave to grow as high as they can from the 
charter God put in their souls. Oregon pines are 
three hundred feet high — how solitary their tops 
must be ; but they start from the same place that 
the shrub does. 



Some men — ^good men after a fashion, think there 
is nothing in the world so hard as that they are not 
so high now as they have been. Their pride and 
their vanity suffer. "What is the trouble, friend ; 
can't you walk down there ? 

" Oh, yes." 

" Can't you procure enough to eat?" 

" Oh, yes.'' 

''Have you not shelter?" 

>' Yes, I have." 



LIVING WORDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PTTLPIT. 67 

« And clothes ?" 

" Well, yes." 

" Can't you get along comfortably ?" 

" Yes ; but then I used to live in a four-story 
house, and move in higher society\ And my child- 
ren are not where I intended that they should 
be," etc. 

Man ! are you a child of God ? Have you not 
the inheritance of the universe by reversion? 
Only wait awhile. Have you not the sympathy 
and love of your Father, and a birth-right to eter- 
nity? What are you grumbling at? Stand up- 
right like a man, a prince. Lift up your front and 
say in true manliness, " I can afford to stand in the 
valley. I think I could stand safely on the top of 
the mountain, but there are many there who could 
not afford to stand in the valley with me. 



Prayer covers the whole of a man's life. There 
is no thought, feeling, yearning, or desire, how- 
ever low, trifling, or vulgar we may deem it, 
which, if it affects our real interest or happiness, 
we may not lay before God and be sure of his sym- 
pathy. His nature is such that our often coming 
does not tire him. The whole burden of the whole 
life of every man may be rolled onto God and not 
weary him,. though it has wearied the man. 



68 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

Some may be content to regard God as a being 
of crystalline purity and awful majesty, to be wor- 
sliipped afar ofF, and not troubled with the details 
of daily life and conflict; but others need a God to 
whom they can come Qiear^ and on whose bosora 
they can lean their heads, and be welcome there. 
They think of him nine times with a gush of filial 
love, where they do so once with solemn and 
shivering awe. They know that he loves each one 
of his children with a separate and peculiar love, 
and that he knows each one by name. 

Pray out your life to God. " Be instant in 
prayer," and the only way to do this, is to go to 
him in all moods ; in joy and sorrow, in depression 
and mirth, in hope and fear ; with everything that 
is in you, or that touches you. Confide in God — 
make him your familiar friend. Keep open the 
path from your heart to the heart of God, and let 
airy feet be always treading its trackless way. 

There is prayer that is too deep for words, or 
even groans. Have you never lain prostrate 
before God in the consciousness that his eyu was 
reading all that you could not tell him? 

No need to explain things to God, as one must 
do to the dearest human friend. No fear of his 
betraying what we pour into his ear. Come 
boldly and gladly to his feet; let him be to you 
a« sunshine on the mountains, to attract and warm, 



LIVIN»G WORDS FEOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 69 

rather than as the shadows of those mouutains 
which can only awe. 

The heart that cannot open to the eye of man 
goes naked and open into the presence of its God. 
There, all the sealed fountains are unclosed ; there, 
all the secrets which must ever be secrets from the 
nearest and most beloved earthly friend, are dis- 
closed, and the shrinking and sensitive soul has no 
reserve. Thus, we have sat down in the forest on 
a summer's day, and as long as men and boys 
tramped by, and the clatter and clash of business 
was heard, there was no movement in the forest ; 
but when the din had ceased, when the footsteps 
had died away, and we sat motionless as the tree 
which supported us, there was a twitter overhead, 
and then an answer from another tree-top. Then out 
hopped a bird, and lifted up its voice in song, and 
then a squirrel ran along the ground, and one by 
one all the mysteries and confidences of the forest 
were revealed to us. Thus unfolds the soul of man 
when none but God is near ; when it is hungering 
and thirsting after either the higher or the lower 
wants of life ; when it is yearning for its Father, or 
when it is home-sick for heaven. 

There be ecstacies in prayer, when the soul 
exults like birds on a fair morning in spring ; and 
there be agonies of prayer, when the burden of 
the soul cannot be even groaned out. We must 



70 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

bear the burden of Christ, the burden of souls; 
this he permits, and when we are before God, 
wrestling for the brother, the child, the loved friend 
of whatever name, when we think of that dear 
soul, glowing amid everlasting light, or wailing 
amid everlasting shadows, what words can ease 
us? 

It is not truth nor philosophy to say that prayer 
alters nothing, that the laws of nature are fixed, 
and tiat entreaty cannot change them. The laws 
of nature are fixed on purj>ose to he used for the 
granting of prayer. Any ma^n can use the laws of 
nature to grant the requests of his child. Does he 
say that God, who made those laws, cannot do as 
much with them as he can ? 

Spontaneity in prayer we claim, as that which is 
most natural to us ; but far be it from our thought 
to condemn form for those who can thus pray best. 
Let no man bind or shackle another man's con- 
science, or try to walk by another man's light. Let 
each be true to himself. ' Oh ! let the soul alone ; 
respect its moods and impulses. Judge not each 
other. Let each sinner pray as best he can, come 
unto God as best he may, but let him come. 

The soul of man sways hither and thither like 
the sea, tossed by restless yearnings, and passions, 
and fears ; and there is no shore against which it 
may break and rest, but the bosom of its God. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 71 

Christ spoke most to the masses clinging to the 
edge of life, struggling, and straining all their 
nerves to keep from slipping off. Their most im- 
portant petition, the burden of their daily cry — 
" bread," " bread !" not " home," " pleasure," 
" children," but simply " bread." 



I've seen luxuriant grasses growing oiiP the tops 
of graves; I've seen flowers springing from the 
crevices of tombs ; and like these are the fair and 
lovely moralities, and the social virtues which 
adorn the character of him who is not born of 
God's Spirit. The corpse, with its corruptions, its 
wasting flesh, and its decaying bones, is beneath 
the fragrant flowers. 



To understand how the imagery of Jesus seemed 
to those who heard it, we should try to enter into 
their circumstances. To speak of the delight and 
refreshment of water in Great Britain, where it is 
almost a nuisance, would be folly. To discourse 
eloquently of the refreshment of the shadow of a 
great rock to an inhabitant of mountain gorges, 
where sunshine is the thing desirable, would be a 
waste of power and time. 

But when we remember that in the ianJ wherd 



73 LIVING WORDS FROM PLTMOIJTH PULPIT. 

most of the Scriptures were written there was, for 
the greater part of the year, but bufning and 
scorching heat ; that there was no winter, as we 
understand the term ; that water was as precious aa 
gold ; and that the digging of a well was the work 
of kings and princes ; that shadow was a luxury, to 
attain which hours of sore and weary travel- 
ling were accounted well spent — we can better 
understand the beauty and force of such figures 
as Jesus uses in speaking to the woman of 
Samaria. 

Digging a well rendered a man the benefactor of 
his race. " Canst thou do more than dig a well ?" 
was the meaning of the woman's question to Jesus. 
This discourse of Jesus to her is an example of his 
usual mode. Never did he begin at abstractions, 
or first things. He never began by thinking away 
back amid mist and mystery ; but from the simple, 
every day events of life he took his texts, and 
preached backward and upward to principles. In 
what entirely different keys were the two (Christ 
and' the woman) conversing: This was one of those 
double meaning conversations that Christ delighted 
in. The woman and he were standing as two might 
stand with a wire gauze window-shade between them. 
He that is within the shade can see out well enough, 
but he that is without cannot see in. Christ was 
within ; he saw on both sides of the curtain ; but 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 73 

the woman stood without, darkly wondering of 
what water he was speaking. 



Men should not be mere indexes ; not condensed 
and abridged editions ; they should be themselves 
in full. Every man has a right to be all that God 
intended he should be, all that he has God's. com- 
mission for in his own nature. And none have a 
right to hinder human growth. .Take off the 
millstones ; untie the bands ; give man room — 
freedom. 



Common things are dearer to Christ than the 
refined and exclusive evolvements of culture. 
Things common to all men are more and better in 
his estimation than the things that are peculiar to 
a class. 



The Christianity of the present age is dead com- 
pared with what it should be. When I lived out 
West our wells were all dug very shallow, and 
when a drought came the water failed. Then we 
sent a man down into the well to dig another with- 
in it, and by and by he came to water far below 
the first well. But if the rain was long withheld 
this well also failed. Then the man was sent a 
third time to dig and dig, until at length he struck 

4 



74 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

the living springs, which flow perpetually, which 
no drought can afi'ect*. Many people think that 
af.er conversion religion will take care of itself. 
That water once gained there will always be a suffi- 
cient supply. There are whole churches whose 
religion is but a few feet deep. As long as showers 
are abundant this may do, but when they do not 
fall often the wells are dry. Let this not be so with 
you. Sink the shaft deeper and deeper still, until 
within you bubbles up that living water which 
runneth from beneath the throne of God. Don't 
depend on showers of grace. Be not at all content 
until the river is within your own^ouls. 

We must either conclude that the piety of the 
present day is a difterent thing from what it was 
intended by Christ to be, or that he spoke the lan- 
guage of exaggeration. That he did not thus 
speak we know by the momentary elevations which 
we experience, when we rise into some nearness 
to the place where it is our right always to stand ; 
, and can return with rapture the smile of our 
Father's love. There are seasons when our souls 
exhale, and sit singing, like birds, in the very tree 
of life. 

Gh ! when I look upon the sun, and see what it 
has power to do — when I see that on the barren 
soil it flings a warm and radiant scarf of light, and 
that beneath that scarf springs up life! life ! life ! and 



LIVING WORDS FEOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 76 

gorgeous beauty^ and lavish and redolent bloom, 
I know that tlie Sun of Kighteousness has a greater 
power than this, if men's stiff, and frozen and 
faithless hearts will but open themselves to his 
rays. 

The love of God ! who can fathom it ? We soon 
cloy with honey ; 'tis not very hard to satisfy our- 
selves with sugar ; even of bread we may tire ; but 
who ever tired of air ? All day we breathe it ; at 
morning, at noon, at night, all night — all our lives, 
and we are not weary. Love is the mtal air of 
the soul. 

Every earthly pleasure wearies, but of spiritual 
pleasures we never tire. The more we are filled 
with them the more hungry and thirsty after them 
we 'grow; and we are more sure, the more we 
taste the love of God, that it can fill us, and be 
always about us, and be always peace and ever- 
lasting joy. 

Why do we not bud and bloom more gloriously 
beneath the shining of this sun of love ? 

It is because we have portioned him, we have 
limited him, we have not consecrated to him the 
whole of our lives. We give him our Sabbaths, our 
morning and our evening hours of prayer, our feel- 
ings of solemnity and self-condemnation, our hours 
of depression and tears ; we go to him in trouble, 
and gloom, and fear, we call upon him early when 



76 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

all is dark about us ; but from our business, from 
our pleasure, from our social and common life, wo 
put him away. Our brightest and most agreeable, 
and our busiest and most useful hours we keep for 
ourselves and our fellows; but we go with our un- 
happy and unattractive moods and feelings, with 
long, forlorn faces, and tearful eyes, to wait upon 
our God, Can this be well-pleasing in his sight ? 
If a lover or a bridegroom gave his chosen fair a 
diamond to wear upon her breast, and she should 
wear it joyfully at all times, save when she came 
into his presence, and then should carefully hide it 
from sight, would he not have a right to complain ? 
but what diamond ever sparkled with so radiant a 
light as shines a smile upon the human face, and 
when it is a heart-smile, it hath a priceless value. 
God gave man power to smile — and man only, of 
all creatures, possesses that power — ^why should he 
seek to hide his smiles and innocent mirth from 
him who made and loves them? 



Did Christ keep his religion for the pulpit, and 
fear to " degrade his office " by mixing with and 
trying to influence the masses? Did he attempt to 
keep his disciples unspotted from the world by 
shutting them froni the rush and turmoil of the 
world ? 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 77 

, Consecrating your life to Christ is not giving 
ap all the pleasures and beauties of life. Take all 
of these that he gives you, and use them gladly 
and gratefully, as gifts from him, to be resigned if 
he so wills it. Be as joyful, as happy — aye, as 
merry as you will, while the sunshine- is upon you, 
but when the shadows fall be patient; and be 
filled alway with abundant love for him. . Let that 
love for him go into every act of your life, whether 
civil or religious. Make every act a religious 
act. 

When Christians learn to do all things as unto 
Christ, then will the church arise and her light 
come ; l>ut while religion and ministers are kept 
pretty much confined to the pulpit, the prayer-meet- 
ing, the study, and the family altar, darkness will 
be on souls and over the earth. 

There are two great difficulties in presenting this 
subject. One* is that you all know so little about 
it; the other is, that Zknow so little about it. "We 
have become so accustomed to the cant of piety 
— so satisfied with a heavy heart, and a solemn 
face, so used to pray and pray, and then go away 
and forget that every act should be as a prayer; 
that, say what we may, we hardly realize that love 
to God should be love^ or that his love to us is 
actual love — a passion, warmer than ever swells in 
human breast — real, throbbing, yearning love, that 

\ 



78 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

knows lis each by name, and longs to have us al^ 
low him to fit us for that larger life where all that 
is here denied to us shall be freely given. 

For in heaven the good things that we have 
now but in part shall be perfected ; and every single 
pure yearning of our nature shall be abundantly 
fulfilled. 

Here we are like plants which the gardener 
keeps in pots till they are ready to be transplanted. 
Often we are in every way very much cramped 
while here ; there we shall have root room, and 
branch room, and the promise of our nature shall 
be more than made good. We shall be made all 
glorious, and be satisfied with our inheritance. 

God does not mock us. He plants no yearning 
in the human soul which he does not intend to 
satisfy ; he gave no capacity which he does not in- 
tend shall find scope for everlasting accomplish- 
ment. 

I apprehend that the words of Scripture are 
often more literal than we suppose. The Christian 
really has truer possessioq^ of the things that now 
are, as well as ownership of the things that are to 
come. 

Alas! for the sorrowful, the lonely, and the 
hopeless, that refuse their rightful inheritance ! 

The difference in the life of a believer and in 
that of an unbeliever is the difference of eternity. 



LIVING WORDS FEOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 79 

The latter plaus for a few years, eighty at most. 
He says, '* My faculties will improve for so long, 
and then decay ; my genius will lighten for so 
long, and then grow dim ; my friends are my 
friends while I live ; my children I love for all this 
life." The whole range of his thought of living is 
within a hundred years. 

But the Christian says, " My faculties may fail 
because of the failing of flesh ; but they will rally, 
and open, and grow forever. I am not improving 
myself for a few years' use, but for eternal ages. 
If my genius slumbers here, it will awake yonder, 
beyond the stars, and sparkle in the brightness of 
God's glory. My friends, familiar and dear, are 
to be mine, and our love is to strengthen and deep- 
en fbrever. My children! the grave may hide 
them, but only for a moment ; they are mine^ for 
the cycles of eternity. Yea, and all that is in the 
universe is mine, and God is mine, and I am his 
forever." 



The man who knows he has but one talent feels 
easier about improving it than he can who is con- 
scious of possessing many. 

The more a man rises the more earnest is he to 
do the work which he was sent to do. Life seems 
short and every step of it full of his destiny. J^o 
'fuan can do the work of any other man. 



80 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

To persons sincerely anxious to leave the world 
wiser and better than they found it, but who feel as 
if they were as yet almost useless in their genera^ 
tion, let this thought give consolation. Many per- 
sons live out half their lives, some even three- 
quarters, before they come to the peculiar work 
which they were sent to do. Meantime they are 
doing good by shedding a right influence. 

The mourner over a wasted life may yet be shown 
that he was fruitful of good when he knew it not. 
From him there may be going sweet influences like 
the fragrance of flowers. 

Some people blossom almost as soon as they enter 
life, and then they depart. The flower that opens 
when it flrst breaks from the ground, and then 
dies, is an emblem of our infants that die. Violets 
are the children and youth who finish their mission 
near life's entrance, and then depart. We mourn 
for them, and say: "How mysterious! cut oft 
when so full of promise !" but we should congratu- 
late them. 

Then there are June flowers, and flowers that 
do not blossom till July or August. These latter, 
and the strong September flowers, go all the spring 
time, and for months after, gathering strength for 
final putting forth. Their time has not been 
wasted; though to the eyes of tliose who know 
them not they have seemed but idle, homely things. 



r^IVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 81 

When they do put forth they hold on bravely till 
the frost kills leaf and flower. 

Let not that man think his life wasted who can 
go home to heaven bearing blossoms, though late 
blossoms, on every limb. 

There is something beautiful to me in the thought 
that there is a specialty of work for each man. 

In work, as in character, disposition, history and 
destiny, there is a specialty ; and when the church 
arises to the New Jerusalem it will not be to sit there 
as one vast photographic likeness, nor shall one be 
able to say of its members, " I have heard their his- 
tory," when the story of one has been told. 

The history of the church will be made up of in- 
dividual histories ; and each one shall possess its 
own peculiar interest. 

Tour history will be none the less interesting 
when mzn^ has been told, nor mine when you have 
related yours. Tour head and heart will not be as 
mine, nor mine as yours ; we shall not be mere frag- 
ments of a universal church ; but we shall be fully, 
roundly, and conspicuously ourselves, in the church 
of which we make a whole, and perfect, and un- 
exampled individual. 



"We regret that all Christ's words were not saved, 
even though they multiplied books as John sup 
poses they would. Yet we already liave more thai3 



4* 



82 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

we heed ; and necessity demands no more, though 
curiosity does. When I remember how closely that 
rough, knotty, gnarled old Johnson was followed, 
and every word from his lips treasured up ; when I 
think how the words of that incarnation of refined 
selfishness, Goethe, were saved, I cannot but say in 
my heart : Why was there no such record kept of 
the sayings of the man Christ Jesus ? 



What labor seems too hard when it is done for 
love ? I don't think it would be very easy to induce 
me to become a basket-maker; hut were it by that 
trade alone that I could hope to gain some maiden 
whom I loved, I would like to see the man who 
would sing more than I would over his weaving. 
Now to you whose lot in life is cast in some uncon- 
genial field, whose labor is with distaste and heavi- 
ness of heart, Christ says : " Do it as if for me. Ill 
be your lover. Work where vou are for me, and 
my love shall reward you." 



The heart of woman yearns for love more than for 
any other thing, and when she asks it of God, he 
replies : " Certainly, my child, if you can bear al. 
that goes with love." But if God loves her, and 
sees that she is asking what will do her harm, he 
will not grant her prayer. 



LIVING WORDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 83 

The man that prays for wealth may have it, if he 
is able to bear the discipline necessary to prevent 
it from proving his ruin. 

One who is bound for destruction may escape the 
stripes that will fall upon the Christianas back who 
attempts to set his heart on mortal lover, or on un- 
certain riches. 

They who make gods of goods, and go bowed 
down under the gold they carry, are worse off than 
they are who journey wearily over the hot sands of 
the desert. For the pilgrims have camels to bear 
their burdens, while they who trust in riches are 
their own beasts of burden. They crouch down 
and crj^ " More, pile on more," and more is often 
given them ; for if a man will have his portion on 
earth it is sometimes given him, and so he goes toil- 
ing beneath his load, with gold on his back, and 
hell in his heart, down to destruction. 



It has ever been a mystery to the so-called Lib- 
erals, that the Calvinists, with what they have con- 
sidered their harshly despotic and rigid views and 
doctrines, should always have been the staunchest 
and bravest defenders of freedom. The working 
for Liberty of these severe principles in the minds 
pf those that adopted them has been a puzzle. But 
the truth lies here — Calvinism has done what nu 



84 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

other religion has ever been able to do. It presents 
the higliest human ideal to the world, and sweeps 
the whole road to destruction with the most appall- 
ing battery that can be imagined. It intensifies, 
beyond all example, the individuality of man, and 
shows in a clear and overpowering light liis respon- 
sibility to God, and his relations to eternity. It 
points out man as entering life under the weight of 
a tremendous responsibility ; having, on his march 
towards the grave, this one sole chance of securing 
heaven and of escaping hell. 

Thus the Calvinist sees him pressed, burdened, 
urged on, by the most mighty influencing forces. 
He is on the march for eternity ; and is soon to 
stand crowned in heaven, or to lie sweltering in 
hell, thus to continue forever and ever. 

Who shall dare to fetter such a being ? Get out 
of his way ! Hinder him not ! or do it at the peril 
of your own soul. Leave him free to find his way 
to God. • Meddle not with him or with his rights. 
Let him work out his salvation as he can. No 
hand must be laid crushingly upon a creature who 
is on such a race as this. A race whose end is to be 
eternal glory, or unutterable woe forever and 
forever, 

They tell us that Calvinism plies men with ham- 
mer and with chigel, It does ; and the result is 
the monumental marble. 



LIVING WOi^DS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 85 

Other systems leave men soft and dirty. Calvin- 
ism makes them of white marble to endure forever. 



You all hate tyrants ; but not half so much as 
God hates a slave. Not that he does not pity the 
poor slave; but when he looks on him he says, 
" This is not my work. I never made this. This 
is not what I intended when I made a man. I 
made him in my image, to stand royally before me, 
to be united to me by loyal love, not to become a 
creature like this." 



When a man says to me, " When I saw that mo- 
ther weeping, and her house burning, and when I 
rushed into the flames, and at the peril of my own 
life saved and restored to her her child, am I to be 
told that that was not a good action — that it was a 
sin in the sight of God ?" 

Not by me, friend, not by me. That was a good 
action. It was a hint of what there is planted in 
your nature by God ; and it shows your guilt in not 
coming to the Sun of Righteousness, that all such 
things within you may be warmed into a continual 
life. 

A man who is capable of such generous acts 
ought to be ashamed not to be what the love of God 
would make him. And if he will not love God, 



86 LIVING WC IDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

and be made into his image, lie needs no other con 
demnation. It is not by the fits and starts of your 
conduct that you are to be judged, but by its whole 
course. And if the centre and ruling principle of 
your life be not love to God, you are radically and 
fatally wrong. 

When we tell you that yon are without God, you 
run and gather up all your occasional emotions of 
gratitude towards him, and of admiration for him, 
and heaping them together before us, say, "What! 
/ without God !" 

Now, you may feel admiration, even very warm 
admiration, for God — every refined and thoughtful 
mind must ; and perhaps, when you are on the 
summit of your joys, just as you cross the highest 
line, you look ofi*, and say, " Thank God ! thank 
God !" it may be very heartily ; but does your gra- 
titude and love for him go down beneath thought 
and feeling, and take hold upon the secret springs 
of your soul? Is your life directed, ruled, and 
formed by that love? Can you look upward 
and say, with glowing breast, " Father, Abba, 
Father!" 

If not, your love is but the starlight, and the 
moonlight, when it should be the light of the fervid 
sun. 

Why, when the sun shines with long, slant ray, 
on Greenland, what lives or thrives beneath its 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 87 

power? But when he pours down straight from 
his meridian, there springs up life and luxuriant 
growth. 

Such love as you speak of is the slant beam of the 
winter sun, or like the shining of moonbeams on 
Nova Zembla. 

You cannot go to heaven with that love. You 
must be born again. Your course must be changed. 

Why, suppose a shipmaster starts from New 
York harbor for the Mediterranean Sea. He goes 
beautifully out of the harbor, and steers straight 
for Greenland. Off Newfoundland he is hailed by 
another sail. His destination is inquired and 
given. 

" Bound for Malta !' ' shouts the stranger. " You ? 
"Wliy, you're steering for the North Pole." 

'' Don't tell me tliat^^ returns our captain, very 
much offended — " Don't tell me that. My ship is 
good and well stored ; my men are good, and they 
find me the most generous of captains. They have 
long sleeping hours and short watches ; they have 
abundance of all. that is good for food. In my 
cabin are plenty of books and flowers, and we have 
fine times down there. We enjoy ourselves very 
much indeed — don't tell me that all this time we 
are on our way to any place but Malta ; I don't be- 
lieve it." 

The stranger passes on, saying derisively : " J 



88 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PUXPIT. 

don't care how good you are to your men, or how 
many good books or beautiful flowers you have got 
below ; all this is very fine, no doubt ; but I say that 
the man that's going to Malta, and heading dii-ect for 
the North Pole, is afool.''^ And so he is ; all h:"^ flow- 
ers^won't save him. His course must be chiinged ; 
and it's just so about the sinner. He's heading for 
hell; and all the flowers and all the good things 
that are in him won't save him, if he don't turn 
short about. He is living for self when he should 
be living for God. Self is his idol, when he should 
worship God. He is all wrong, wrong, and will 
certainly be lost if he doesn't come to Jesus for 
help, safety, and grace to flt him for heaven. 

" But," do you say : " must a man be converted 
when he is already good enough ?" 

Certainly not. If he is as good as conversion 
can make him, he may go to heaven on that 
ground; there is no jealousy in the matter. If 
you can deserve heaven, God is perfectly willing 
that you should do so. 

If any of you can go to him and say truly, 
" Lord, I've always loved thee with all my heart, 
and strength, and mind, and my neighbor as my- 
self—need I be converted? Can't I go to heaven 
as I am ?" God will answer : 

" Yes, certainly, you are like the angels, and need 
no conversion or redemption." 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 89 

Kow I would like to see all in this congregation 
who feel as though they could honestly say this to 
God^ rise up where they are. I would like to count 
them. What ! not one ? Is there not one in this 
great congregation who dare make such a plea ? 
Then you have no plea that will stand you for a 
moment. 

Suppose that some provision for all your past 
sins could be made, and you started to-morrow 
morning to begin life anew. Tou say to pride: 
" Now, pride, you're not going to be master any 
more. I'm going to be master now ; I'll hold you 
in ; I'll tread on you." And you go forth and re- 
turn at night lamenting thus : " Pride has over- 
come me, and ran away with me ; it has dashed me 
almost to atoms ; I cannot stand at all against its 
diabolical power." 

Then you say to your other passions, " Lie down, 
I will be master ;" and they rise up and roar at 
you ; they wrestle with and cast you down ; they 
rend and worry you, leaving you nigh to death. 
Then you begin to see what you are and where 
you are, and you bemoan yourself thus : " I never 
was half so bad as this till I tried to grow better. 
I had not a thought of the strength of the evil 
nature in me ; I cannot reform. Oh ! wretched 
man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body 
of this death." ISTow you are in the right place to 



90 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

hear that Jesus Christ will deliver you. Hia 
power cau convert you, and will do it if you are in 
earnest in asking. And then he will take, care of 
your sins ; all you will have to do will be to forget 
them. Go heartily to work for him ; work for him 
in your own heart, for you will always find plenty 
to do there ; and work for him in the world, in 
your business, your studies, your pleasure, your 
whole life, work for him. Your most radical and 
central ideas must be Godward before you will be 
headed right and sailing heavenward. Beware! 
if a slow-match be placed by the magazine, you 
may heap the building with gardens full of flowers, 
but they will not save you from being blown sky- 
higli wlien the fire reaches the powder. 

Oh! men! men! men! struck through with the 
rottenness of sin, come out of the darkness, escape 
for your lives. Ye young, come to the light, come 
to joy, come to immortal life. 



If all unkind and unjust words were arrows, like 
needles and pins ; and if, instead of piercing the 
ear and then the heart, they flew against the bodies 
of those to whom they were directed, the child- 
ren in some men's families would be like pin- 
cushions stuck completely full of sharp and painful 
weapons. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 91 

Thk command of Christ to take up the cross has 
been signally and widely misunderstood. The 
Christian life presents so broad a front, that all 
views blend in it. This is but one. They err who 
would make it the characteristic of religion. 

Deny thyself, and take thy cross ; but still be not 
seeking for burdens. If the Lord says to thee, " Go 
forward.'' go^ though the next step be over a preci- 
pice five hundred feet deep, where far below you 
trees look like grass. The air may become solid 
beneath your feet ; but if not, go forward where 
duty calls, and the end shall be peace and life ; but 
don't be ever feeling as if the burden of the Lord 
was heavy, and to be borne with groans, and bent 
frame, and sighings — or that you must turn from 
life's pleasures, merely because they are pleasures, 
and it would be denying yourself to forsake them. 

Christianity asks no such sacrifices. She gives 
fullness to the joys of life, saying only, walk in the 
love and fear of God ; rejoice freely in all life's 
pure pleasures, but -murmur not if God see fit to 
take them from you. Be patient when the trial 
comes, but be not seeking poverty of any earthly 
delight. 

Not such Jesuitical notions are those of Christ- 
ianity. Men are not called upon to empty them- 
selves of the loves of earth, and to become ghostly, 
and ghastly despisers of its warmth and beauty. 



92 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT 

They are called to bring all that is natural within 
them, given of God in the beginning, and have it 
sanctified, then love shall tell them wliere to take 
up the cross, and where to deny themselves ; and 
soon there will be only strength in the cross, and 
choice in the self-denial ; for as the higher faculties 
grow and rise, the lower will cause less and less 
pain in submittins^. They will mind quicklv, at the 
first start of their superiors, and what was sore self- 
denial will be so no longer. 



The time when Christians will be no longer called 
to poverty and hardness, to narrowness and com- 
monness of outward life, is coming. We are on the 
edges of it, and therefore I speak to warn you to 
consecrate your prosperity and your pleasures to 
the Lord. The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness 
thereof; and all that is rich, and tasteful, and beau- 
tiful, he will give into the hands of his own child- 
ren. The devil has stolen the wealth and beauty 
of this world; but he cannot retain it. iM' that 
taste and riches can command is yet to be bebiowed 
upon the church ; when she shall have become so 
pure that she can stand blameless, generous, honest, 
and humble, in prosperity and luxury. Christians 
have yet to learn — and they will learn it — the les- 
Bon of humility and godliness in the midst of riches. 



LIVING WORDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 93 

They will learn how to walk aright not in sack 
cloth, but in velvet ; how to be not only steadfast 
under affliction, but under blessing. They will be 
able to endure not only hardness, but what is far 
more dangerous, softness— and will be able to bear 
not only defeat and baffling, but victory. 



I WISH that I could see a right sort of prayer- 
meeting. We have better prayer-meetings here 
than they do in many places ; but I have heard in 
this lecture-room prayers that I don't think went 
higher than the ceiling, and talks that had no life 
in them, said simply because you had come to say 
something, and thought that was about the right 
thing to say. 

Now if I could hear a man standing up in his 
place, say, 

" I'm cross at home. I trouble my wife. I am 
harsh and ungentle to my children. I don't repre- 
sent to them at all the character of God. Indeed, 
I'm afraid if God were presented to them as their 
father^ that they would be more inclined to run 
away from him than if they viewed him solely a? 
a judge. My brethren, I don't want to be such a 
wicked Christian. I am sorry and sad because I 
am such. Can you tell me how to improve ?" 

Or : '^ Brethren, I'm stingy — dreadful stingy and 



94: LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

harsh. I do give sometimes ; but it comes very 
hard. I want to get as much work out of every- 
body as I can for the least pay. I try to be prudent 
by getting good bargains out of otlier people. 
When I can buy a good garment at half price, or 
when I can get a day's work olit of a poor person 
for half a day's wages, I generally do it. Can any 
of you show me how to get a generous heart ?" 

Or : "I'm growing rich, and I feel the swellings 
of vanity and self-importance already beginning in 
my heart. Can you tell me how to keep humble, 
and to glorify God in what I keep for myself, as 
well as in what I give away ?" 

Then I should say we are having a genuine work 
of grace in our meeting. My people, w^e must 
make our religion fit our times, our dispositions, 
and OUT wants, and not try to torture ourselves into 
the shapes of ancient times. The first Christians 
were forced to apply religion chiefly to supporting 
themselves under losses, privations, and persecu- 
tions ; but we need to apply it more in other direc- 
tions. Our tempers, our households, our business, 
our political duties, our pecuniary circumstances, 
must all be guided by religion, or we are faithless 

in our generation. 

• 

I don't know which is most lovely and admir- 
able, a poor and devoted saint at the very gate of 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 95 

Btarvation, who is fall of love and grace, and who 
is ever doing good, or a rich and lifted up saint, 
who, with not a want that need go ungratified, who 
is yet as pure and humble, as self-denying and 
generous as though he had never known wealth. 
But the latter needs most grace to keep him. 



The world is God's journal wherein he writes 
his thoughts, and traces his tastes. The world 
overflows with beauty. Beauty should no more be 
called trivial, since it is the thought of God. 
Through beauty things become useful. It is a 
religious duty for a man, so far as honestly he 
can, to surround his children with creations of taste 
and beauty, that their finer instincts may be cul- 
tured and gratified. The love of beauty is the gift 
of God, and it is born in the heart of every child. 



Many good people think it wrong to indulge in a 
taste for the fine arts. They are even much exer- 
cised by conscience for wearing expensive clothing. 
They lay oS broadcloth and silks, and dress in lin- 
sey-woolsey ; but they may then still retrench and 
retrench, that they may have more for the poor ; 
for this principle, carried out, would lead back to 
barbarism. It is not the right one. Every man 
should do his part for the poor, o/nd Ms heart shavJd 



96 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

enlarge as his means increase ; but he who can earn 
them has a right to* refinements for himself and for 
his children. 

Men have got to learn how to unite the elegances 
of high polish and luxury with self-denying humil- 
ity and generosity ; they have got to learn how to 
revel amid the delights of music, poetry and paint- 
ing, and not be hurt by any or all of these before 
the millennium will be fully established ; for God's 
children are to walk amid all the good and beauti- 
ful things of the earth, and be holy there. No 
man has any business to be unrefined, or neglectful 
of the cultivation of taste. By the love of nature ; 
by music and poetry, and painting ; by flowers, 
and by the neatness and elegance of household 
appliances, grossness will be destroyed. It is a 
mark of a sinking nature to be indifferent to every- 
thing but food, clothing and shelter. Beauty in 
the house, beauty on the person, beauty all around, 
should be a man's aim ; and every home should 
resound with melody, and be bright with the 
results of genius and taste — thus will be the homes 
of the latter day. 

It is more worthy of a Christian man to take 
gladly and gratefully all these delights, and to 
learn to carry himself aright in the use of them, 
than it is to refuse them all, and go stinted and 
starved of beauty, through the world. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 97 

Aecustom your children to the elegancies, refine- 
ments aiid beauties of life, while at the same time 
you train them rgbustly in the exercise of all 
that is good within them. Thus they shall grow 
up around you elegant, refined, beautiful ; and as 
agreeably^ as they are thoroughly^ good ; which will 
be a very great advantage that they will have over 
some of the good people of the present day, who 
are the most disagreeable people on earth. 

Clothes and manners don't make the man ; but 
when he is made, they improve his appearance. 



The sweetesfc and most generous natures are the 
ones in greatest danger of becoming soured through 



the ingratitude of the world. 



The family is the first, and by far the most im- 
portant, institution in the world. It is the true 
church ; the best expounder of the truths of Christ- 
ianity. It is from the family that the only real 
idea of the relationship between God and man can 
be obtained ; for God is more a father than he is a 
king, or a judge ; and thus men should be taught to 
regard him. Paternity is the strangest of life's 
mysteries, and the most solemn. Men come here to 
watch that the priest teach his church right things. 
Look at home, father priest, mother priest, yowr 

5 



98 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

church is a hundredfold heavier responsibility than 
mine can be. Your priesthood is from God's own 
hands, and it is a solemn thing to have God lay his 
hands upon you in paternity — to give you a church 
from your own loins. You would all condemn 
the man who should rush with haste and levity into 
the ministry; but not half so worthy of condemna- 
tion would he be, as they are who enter thought* 
lessly, led but by fancy and youthful inclination^ 
into the marriage state, and are constituted priests 
of the family. They are the formers of immortal 
characters as no other priests can ever be. Let 
them look well to hovj they form them. 

Children are not given primarily for your love, 
or for your amusement, though incidentally they 
are for these ; nor are they given for a staff for your 
old age, though they shall be this also, if you are 
the wise support of their youth ; but they are given 
for your education, and to become, like you, inde- 
pendent beings. 

You are not to consider them as burdens, or to 
repine that you are wearing out your life for them, 
but you are to guide them carefully ; to instruct 
them fully in the path by which they are to jour- 
ney when they may no longer cling to your hand. 
Teach them so that when you leave them to go on 
alone, they may know how to steer for the safe 
haven. If you do 3^ our duty faithfully, you will 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 99 

reap your reward as jou go along; if you fail, 
litter will be your punishment ; for no keener suf- 
fering can be known on eartli, than, that which 
the heart of a parent bleeds under when the 
hand that administers it is the hand of his own 
child. 

A man who has never had the care nor felt the 
love of little children, who has not been taught self- 
denial by his desire for their^'good, is, so far forth, 
not a perfect man. 

I do not say that the discipline must of necessity 
come through children of his own blood; but he 
must be taught of childhood, or he is forever 
unfinished. 



For a poisoned heart there is nothing in the 
world so poisonous as men. It is not weU to see too 
much of men. 



I CAN conceive of a state of public sentiment 
and morals, in which there might properly be 
free utterance of truths, which in the present 
state of society a minister has not a right to 
express. 

The people could not understand or bear them 
now, and to speak them out would be to touch 
morality, and to cause great evil. This, in the days 



100 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

oi Christ and his apostles, was the case in regard to 
many truths which it is now the leading duty of his 
ministers to proclaim boldly. As the ages pass, the 
circumstances of men change, and truth must be 
bi*ought to bear on men as they can bear it. Pre- 
mature developments work mischief. This prin- 
ciple both Christ and his disciples fully recognized, 
and many yet are the secret truths of God. The 
future will unfold them as they are needed. 



When" sick of humanity, away to the desert, the 
forest, or the ocean shore ; there is balm in nature 
for the wounded and weary heart ; healing is in 
all her low uttered voices. 



Men who were to treat their social affections as 
we treat our religious ones, would be regarded as 
fools — and with reason. While we are busied with 
the pressing affairs of life, we cannot feel the glow 
of religious affection — nor is it expected. If, when 
the pauses of business come (not when we pause 
from exhaustion, but in the leisure hours) — our soul 
gladly returns unto its love; or if, when in the 
hurry of work and trade, a question of jprincijple 
comes up, our thoughts glance quickly Godward, 
and we decide as in his presence^ we need not vear 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. lOl 

that we are in a cold, back-slidden state, though we 
be, indeed, very dih'gent in business. To have the 
fear of the Lord always before one, it is not neces- 
sary that one should be always directly thinking of 
him, or of spiritual things. This is impossible in 
those pauses of daily life, where it is our dxdy 
to concentrate thought upon secular concerns. 
" Ye cannot serve God and mammon," has been 
perverted to mean that it was unchristian for a man 
ever to give his whole attention to money mak- 
ing. 

Now the whole attention of a man must be given 
to study, during study hours, or he will never make 
a scliolar; and it must be equally given to business, 
during business hours, or he will never succeed in 
the proper support of his family, or the Gospel. 
When the work and the strain is over, then the 
soul of the Christian will consciously rejoice in the 
Lord. 

What if I, on awaking, were to say : '^ Now, I 
will love my family with all my heart — nothing 
shall, this day, interfere with my love for them," 
and were then to go into a furious fervor about it, 
embracing and kissing them, and declaring my 
affection for them. I might try to WQi*k, with my 
mind so hotly'fixed on them, but I could not do it. 
I should soon say : " I can't hunt up these texts — I 
can't write these sermons — they require my whole 



102 LIVING WOKDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

attention, and that is not justice to my wife and 
children — they turn away my thoughts and affec- 
tions from my family — I will no longer try to work 
at them." I then impatiently toss books and 
papers aside, and devoting myself to the decla- 
rative form of love for my family, forget all else. 
How much good should I do them under such cir- 
cumstances ? The true way to prove my love for 
them is, to devote myself steadily to some way of 
supporting them. Then, at the season of relaxa- 
tion from work, I shall be sure to enjoy them and 
their love. 

Just so in spiritual matters ; for the family is the 
best teachsr of theology. The men who walk in 
lonely places, thinking only of God and the angels, 
are not the most reliable Christians — are not the 
bone and sinew of the church. This has been 
proved throughout the ages. 

Any such thought of the things unseen and 
eternal, as shall unfit a man for his daily secular 
duties, or teach him to despise them, is wrong 
thought, and should be discarded. Religion un- 
derlies all things. It is intended to fit a man for 
life — to teach him how to carry himself in his busi- 
ness, his pleasures, and his pains, as much as to aid 
him when he dies. It was not meant to iift him 
out of, or beyond, the common work or wants o\ 
life, until life is passed. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 103 

/ 

The frozen ship which, last week, came strug- 
gling towards New York harbor, is a figure of 
man's soul before grace enters it. 

Look at her condition ! Her ropes and rigging 
incased in^ shining ice; her men mailed in ice — ice 
in their hair, ice on their beards, their feet and 
legs clad in the frozen mail, the gauntlets on 
their hands heavy and stiff with the same cold 
armor, and their hearts freezing in them from long 
struggling and despair. The pumps must be 
worked incessantly, to keep the ice-loaded ship 
afloat ; but the strokes fall slower and slower, for 
the life is congealing in the arms of the hopeless 
mariners. 

Hark ! a hail. See ! a pilot-boat is near. An- 
other moment, and the pilot is on board. 

" Give me the helm," he says to the worn-out 
man at the wheel. "I know just where you 
are, and will get you safe into port in a few 
hours." 

The men find themselves suddenly endowed with 
new powers of motion. They rush about the 
decks, obeying the pilot's orders. They pull at the 
^opes ; they rattle the icy shrouds, they make the 
crust fly from the tackling. Up the slippery rat- 
lines they climb ; they dash from the frozen rigging- 
masses which before they could not move. The 
cordage creaks and groans, and its shivered mail 



104 LIVING WORDS FROM PLVMOUTH PULPIT. 

rattles down upon the decks; sails are reefed and 
unreefed, they hoist this sheet, and take in that, 
all with the same stiff and frozen hands and limbs 
which, an hour before, were yielding to the torpor 
of death. 

Cheerfulness is on all faces, hope in every heart. 
They have got a pilot. He will guide them into 
port. Their lives are saved. 

The soul is that ice-bound vessel ; its unrenewed 
powers are those ice-clad, helpless men. Grace is 
the pilot, whose coming renews the life and hope 
of all. 

And grace alone can encourage one who has 
once seen himself to be in the wretched condition 
which has been described. Grace can strengthen 
and cheer; it can guide the soul into the safe 
haven. Without it there is no true life — only frost 
and ice, and hopeless and heavy gloom, ending in 
eternal death. 



I WOULD pave hell with doubts ; yea, 1 would 
so fill and choke it up with doubts that it could 
contain nothing else, could I by that undo the 
reality of it, and necessity for it. 

Hours are like sponges — they wipe out good 
resolutions. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 105 

No man ever becomes a Christian bv beo;innino: 
with his outward life. Reformation is not religion ; 
though it often precedes, and always accompanies 
it.' He who is constantly laboring to reform his 
conduct, and to square his life by the rules of 
morality while his heart is not right with God, has 
all the burden and cross of religion, but none of its 
peace. 

And he will never gain much upon the work he 
is trying to do ; for, if the very faults, from which 
he has for a time escaped, do not overtake him, 
others, perhaps worse, will, as long as the principle 
within him remains unchanged. He may, with 
strong hand and iron will, curb the outgoings of 
pride and passion in some old direction, but they 
will find new courses. There is no curing effects 
until causes are reached. 



Camping down upon the edges of a sin from 
which a man has just escaped, is dangerous work. 
A person in such a position is like one who, upon 
finding himself in the running current of a river 
which is rising, swollen by heavy rains, struggles 
desperately until he reaches its banks, and there 
settles himself in false security. In the morning, 
the waters of the freshet are booming about him, 
and he fiies to the meadow, a little higher. But 

5* 



106 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

the floods are out, and they rise and rise, faster 
than he can run, and the man who, by fleeing at 
once to the mountains^ when he came up from the 
river, would have been saved, by tarrying upon 
the lowlands, perishes. 



Never was there such a contrast in a conversa- 
tion as that presented in the conversation between 
Christ and the woman of Samaria. Christ speak- 
ing from the top of all spiritual apprehension, the 
woman from the bottom of sensuous knowledge. 



In the higher sense, there is no right action 
without right motive, and the only right motive is, 
Low to God. 

You may spend your whole life picking oflf your 
old dried leaves and dead "branches, but if in the 
centre springs of your soul you are not subdued to 
God, your work, although rewarded in this life, as 
all morality is, will not be accepted in heaven. 

I have seen a gardener at work upon a tree 
which had a worm gnawing into it at the point 
where the root and the trunk united. The earth 
hid the worm, and so, when the leaves withered, 
the owner went and picked them ofi*, and waslied 
the tree with the various things that he had heard 
recommended for diseased trees. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYlioUTH PULPIT. 107 

When the branches began to perish he hewed 
them off, and he worked and worked all summer at 
that tree, but it died. Now, had the gardener 
called for a spade, and removed the earth about 
the roots, and Tcilled that worm^ he might have 
given himself no farther trouble about the withered 
leaves, or the dying branches. There would have 
been no more of them. 



The reason why inquirers cannot find the peace 
for which they seek, is because there is self-will 
hiding somewhere out of sight ; like the main- 
spring of a watch, which cannot be seen, and 
which yet is the very life of motion in the watch, 
self-will is the ruling power in every sinner's heart. 
It lurks in such darkness that the man himself can- 
not always see it. But often he knows very well 
where it is snugged away ; and when conviction 
comes upon him, when he longs to be religious 
and at peace, he goes with a candle into every 
place where this rebel is not, to hunt him out and 
make him surrender to God. Into all the cham- 
bers of his soul he goes with his candle. He sees 
how sinful he is in them, and he freely opens them 
to God's cleansing. He never set much store by 
anything in these rooms ; but there is a dark, close 
closet in the mansion, from which the sinner keeps 



108 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

carefully away. He don't thrust his candle in 
there^ and say to the thing that cowers within, 
" There you are ; come out and be made captive." 
Oh ! no. This is the worm at the core ; and you 
may go on with your hard working out your salva- 
tion till you die ; and if you do not unearth him, 
you will land in perdition. 

This enemy will lurk in a closet only while he is 
hunted for. A culprit is hid in a house ; the offi- 
cers come to seek for him ; the master of the man- 
sion shows them hither and thither, bids them 
open this door, and that ; go up garret, and down 
cellar, and be satisfied. But when they pass a 
panel in which there is a secret spring, he says 
not a word about it; and it remains "untouched. 

The officers are satisfied that the man they seek 
is not there, and they depart. When the door 
shuts behind them, the panel opens, and a face is 
seen at the window watching them away. 

Now the culprit is out. He walks about the par- 
lors, the halls, the chambers, just as he was wont, 
until there is a sound as of returning footsteps; 
when he instantly vanishes behind the closing panel. 

.Thus difficult to discover is the hiding-place of 
self-will. When once that principle is reached 
and grasped, the whole man can be easily guided. 
He is guided whithersoever that subtile principle 
wills that he should go. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 109 

Look at that stately ship. What a mighty hull 
she has — three hundred feet long; her masts a hun- 
dred feet high. How well set is her rigging, how 
clearly defined her spars. We may see her dis- 
tinctly, but not all. Away down under the water, 
hiding at the ship's stern, there is a little plank that 
IS of more importance than all that so proudly 
towers on the breast of the billows. 

Neither hull, nor decks, nor main-mast, nor 
mizzen-mast, nor bowsprit, nor yards, nor sails, 
would be of any use without that plank down under 
water. Suppose that some person, ignorant of this 
fact, should attempt to guide that ship's course. 
He would say, in despair, after wearing himself out 
with fruitless efforts : " What does ail this ship ? I 
have pulled at her bows ; I have furled and unfurled 
her sails ; I have tugged at every rope in her, but 
she will not keep her course. I cannot manage 
her. She will do nothing right. What can it 
mean?" 

Now, suppose an old salt should say, " Have you 
tried the wheel ?'' 

"Wheel?" says the man, "what wheel? No; 
I've tried no wheel." 

" Lay hold here, my hearty," cries the sailor. 
The landsman grasps the wheel, and the little plank 
below turns two inches, and the ship, though she be 
ten times as large, and ten times as heavily laden, 



110 LIVING W« RD8 FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

moves submissively round to the strength of one 
man's hand. 

Now you may tug at your topmasts, or toil at 
your bows, and you Tvill die with your course all 
wrong. You never will head for the safe harbor 
till you take your stand at the wheel. 



Never think that God is going to make a Christ- 
ian out of you without effort of your own. When 
the lion crouches down before you, and his eyes 
glare upon you, and he is about to spring, you need 
not expect Providence to fire your gun for you ; 
you must do it yourself or die. 'Tis kill or be 
killed with you then. God has already done his 
part in the work of your salvation. If you don't 
choose to do your part you will perish. 



The moralist says, " It has cost me severe labor to 
be as good as I am ; how shall I ever be able to do 
greater things than these ?" Friend, there is a rock 
which on one side is supported by the solid earth, 
on another side by other rocks, on a third by trees, 
but upon the fourth side it has no support, and it 
requires there but a few pounds' weight to tip it 
downward. 

Now you may go and destroy yourself in efforts 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. Ill 

to remove that rock, and only imbed it deeper 
in the earth, or fasten it more firmly in the trees or 
among other rocks ; but, push it in the right direc- 
tion^ and it is no longer there. I tell you it would 
not be half so hard to be a great deal better 
Christian, than to be the moralist you are. You 
are all the time pushing the rock the wrong way. 
Do you say : " Well, it is the most earnest desire 
of my life to become a Christian. What lack I 
yet? What is in the way?" I cannot tell — I 
might tell, in particular cases, but not generally. 
Butj 'tis a question that each one can answer for 
himself, if he is sincere in wishing to know. 

God will answer all prayer for help in such cases, 
when it is patiently and honestly continued. 



The law is a battery which protects all that is 
behind it, but sweeps with destruction all that is 
before. Eepenting toward the law is repenting 
toward destruction, but repenting toward God is 
repenting toward life and peace. 

We count it marvellous that Christ bore our sins 
a few hours for us. Ah! God bore them long 
before — ^lie bears them yet. The agony upon the 
cross was but one outshining upon us of his unut- 
terable pity and love. 'Tis not at cold, bloodless, 
senseless law, that we strike by sin ; but straight 



112 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

home upon the throbbing, yearning heart of God, 
our Father. 

The world has an ugly way of forgiving. It can 
forgive ; but as to forgetting^ that's quite another 
thing; and it must give the offender its mind. It 
sets him down before the blowpipe of its indigna- 
tion, and scorches him through and through. Now 
that is not the way that God forgives — he runs to 
meet a penitent while he is yet a great way off. 
Iiy,ns is the figure — not waits, not walks— rwTi^/ 
and he don't tell the trembling sinner what he 
thinks of him; he don't excoriate, bruise, and 
taunt, as the world does, till the penitent wishes a 
'hundred times that he never had repented ; but — as 
he himself declares — he forgives with no upbraiding ; 
and the transgressions of the sinner shall not be 
even mentioned to him, ov remembered against hira, 
any more. 

There are sitting before me, in this congregation, 
now two hundred men who stuff their Sundays full 
of what they call religion, and then go out on Mon- 
days to catch their brothers by the throat, saying : 
" Pay me that thou owest ; it's Monday now, and 
you needn't think that because we sat crying toge- 
ther yesterday over our Saviour's sufferings and 
love, that I'm going to let you off from that debt, * 
if it does ruin you to pay it now." 



LIVING WOEDS FROM PLYMOTJlfl PULPIT. 113 

FeaEj in its normal action, leads towards hope. 
In its place it is good ; but when you find that it 
leads to despondency, be sure that 'tis out of its 
place, and acting morbidly. Water is good to float 
timber, but a water-logged tree will certainly sink. 
Don't allow yourself to be water-logged by fear or 
anxiety. 

Bad men may keep up long, but when once they 
fall they cannot rise again. They are like apples I 
have seen hanging from a tree, round and fair as 
they could be, but also inside as rotten as they 
could be. As long as they could swing upon 
their stem they did w^ell enough, but when they had 
fallen and smashed upon the ground, I never heard 
of their being made good apples of afterwards. 



A MAN who makes calculation and provision for 
this life only, is like a sea captain who, starting on 
a voyage to Europe, lays in provisions sufficient to 
last him only until he gets safe past the lighthouse, 
and but into the open sea. 



There are some men's souls that are so thin, so 
almost destitute of what is the true idea of soul^ that 
were not the guardian angels so keen-sighted they 
would altogether overlook them. 



114: LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

Men are differently built. There are men who 
are broad and strong at the base, in the middle, and 
up until you reach the moral faculties. These are 
shrunken in, and almost vanished. 

Such men are like lighthouses, built well at the 
bottom, and all the way up. All right, only they 
have no lantern, and no light. And the two things, 
the man and the house, are equally valuable. 



Each one is at liberty to fashion God so that his 
thought can clasp him ; else there can be no love 
to God. Make him to suit your want, and you 
will have gratitude and love to him. 

Some people, when they think of God, have a 
vague idea of greatness — and when thej^ pi'^'^y? they 
pray into nothing, hoping that, perchance, some 
good angel will gather up their prayers, and bear 
them into the divine presence. 



All truth is equilibrated. Pushing any truth 
out very far, you are met by a counter truth. A 
man generally runs one truth out till he meets an- 
other, and then he drops his first truth and goes 
over to its counter. By and by he swings back and 
gains his true position, that of a hub in ti wheel, 
with all truth pointing towards him, and meeting 
where he stands. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 115 

The truth of man's freedom, carried to a certain 
extent, is met bj his dependence upon, and action 
according to, the will of God. The truth of a man's 
individuality meets, at a certain point, the truth of 
his sociality of being. These things are all true, 
and to be right ^ a man must be on hoth sides. 



The idea of right living seems to be, with some 
men, not doing anything wrong^ as if righteousness 
consisted in negatives. " Why," says the man 
charged with being a sinner worthy of death, 
" why, I never hurt anybody in my life ; I never 
committed a sin in my life — that is, you know, a 
real sin. You don't mean that I should be shut out 
of heaven were I now to die." 

Perhaps the man puts great restraint upon him- 
self, and is really at a great deal of trouble not to 
do wrong. He keeps himself shut in very closely, 
even more so than many a real Christian does ; but 
if he be not right at the springs of life, he is on the 
way to eternal ruin just as surely as is the thief 
or murderer, though on a different charge, and 
though he is, as far as this world goes, a far better 
man. 

But what sliip-owners would justify the captain 
who should say to them, upon returning from some 
foreign land, " Here is your ship in the same order 



116 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

as when I took her. I have not harmed her, nor 
used her for unlawful or piratical purposes. She is 
cm/pty^ to he sure ; I have done no business for you ; 
but liere is that which is yours." 

God has sent men out upon the sea of time. 
They are freighted as no ship ever was. Do you 
think that he will exonerate them if they dare to 
go up before him with a plea like that just urged ? 
Our talents must be improved, that at his coming 
he may receive his own with usury. 

It is a man's duty to bring the influence of love 
to God to bear on every faculty of his soul, that it 
may be educated and expanded thereby. A man 
should live in every part of himself, and not be con- 
fined to one, two, or six apartments. The world 
calls a man made or ruined when he has made or 
lost — what? Wife, children, character, honor, 
reason ? Oh, no — not these ; but money ! Thai^s 
the thing in which the world makes '' the life " of 
man to consist. Ships are made in various com- 
partments, each air and water-tight, so that when a 
rock dashes through the bows of the hull, tho i^^ood 
ship does not sink, because there are enough other 
compartments to buoy her up till she gets where 
she can be overhauled for repairs ; but men who 
have naturally the means of outfloating all the 
storms, and all the leakages of life, allow most of 
their compartments to become ruinous for want of 



LIVING WCRDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 117 

use and care. And then, when into the one, or 
perhaps two or three compartments where they 
do live, bursts the sunken reef, they are foundered 
at once. The waters dash in upon tbem, and they 
are gone — sunk like a bullet in the sea. 

And for this they will be brought into judgment. 
ls"o man has any right to live in his animal nature, 
or in his affections, in his tastes and sentiments, in 
his reason and intellect, or even in his moral na- 
ture, to the undue depression of the rest of himself. 
He should open his whole house, and let light 
stream into and gleam from the windows of every 
apartment. Te who live otherwise are dead while 
you live. But Christ can give you life. Come 
unto him. 



Make it clear that Christ on earth, with his 
fathomless love, his unutterable pity, his divine 
gentleness, and quick and tender notice of all 
appeals from the humble and poor, was different, 
in hind^ from what he is in heaven — prove that he 
acted from design, more than from the impulse of 
character, and that now the tenderness of that 
strange love and pity is no more, and you take away 
my Lord, and I know not where ye have laid him. 
You have robbed me of my God. But now I look 
upon the story of his acts on earth, when he was, in 
some sort, fettered by flesh, and the laws which are 



118 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

the masters of flesh, and I say, " If his pity, and his 
patience, and his love, were such as this while here, 
what rnusi they ie now, in their full expansion V' 

Christ can^e to die for our sins ; but he came also 
to show us what is the character of Ood — to teach 
us, by lessons that we can understand, what sort 
of disposition he has who made us ; and now, in- 
stead of wishing to go back 1800 years, in order to 
sit at his feet in Jerusalem, let us rejoice that every 
year brings us nearer to the hour when we shall go, 
not to Jesus hampered by fleshlj' laws, and shrouded 
as lights are from the eyes of the sick — but to 
our Saviour glorified and waiting to welcome his 
children and his brothers to their long-sought 
home. 

I would have loved to listen to my Saviour as he 
taught upon the plains, or on the mountains, or in 
the cities of Judea; I would have loved to sit at 
his feet, to watch his looks as he uttered the blessed 
words that are recorded; I would have loved to 
speak with him, face to face — to have seen his smile 
— to have touched his hands ; but, thank God ! I can 
do better than that — I can have him, and can hold 
him in my heart of hearts, as that sweet Friend 
and Comforter, who could not come down to 
earth till the man^ Christ Jesus, was received up 
into heaven. By love I am conjoined to him, 
and I feel his &oul touch my soul. Thus I can 



LIVING WORDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 119 

abide with him until I see him, face to face, in 
heaven. 



It seems a hard thing to realize, that so great 
and high a being, and one so holy as God is, should 
trouble himself at all about man — a worm — one of 
these little angling worms that crawls out of his 
earthy hole, and suns himself a moment, and then 
crawls in again. But if even the hairs of our heads 
are all numbered — if he takes notice of hair^ than 
which nothing seems more worthless, 'tis a lifeless 
thing that we cut and throw away — a mere appen- 
dage, the fringe of a man — what notice must God 
take of our living hearts y our thoughts, which are 
but the souls of things? We can no longer believe 
that thoughts and hearts are a matter of small mo- 
ment to him who made us. He knows us each one 
by name, by disposition, by character, and he 
loved us before we were born. Now when he 
asks us to love and trust in him, he only asks what 
we know perfectly well how to do — what, evei 
since we were born, we have been doing, only not 
towards him. Didn't we love our mother ? Was it 
hard to love her? Don't we trust our friends? Is 
it hard to trust them ? 

But where is there mother, or father, or friend, 
like God? And do you say, ^*It is hard to lovo 



120 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

and trust in him ?" Or do you say : '^ 1 believe 
in fore-ordination, and am waiting ' God's time.'" 

Fore-ordination ! that is a shameful sham. God's 
time is " now," he never has any other time. Fore- 
ordination is nothing for you to meddle with, any 
more in religious than in money-making matters. 
In each it is in equal force, but 'tis God's business, 
not yours. If you will meddle with it, you deserve 
to get befogged and puzzled, though there's nothing 
against, but eveiything for you in it. But let it 
alone, if it troubles you. 

What farmer, when the sun runs high, and the 
earth is ready for the seed, and the small rain and 
the dew are coming on the earth, says : " I believe 
in fore-ordination ; I shall not take the trouble to 
plant. If I'm to have a harvest, I shall have one." 

Or what merchant, when he goes to his store in 
the morning, says : " If I'm to have a good large 
heap of money in my till to-night, I shall hav^ it 
there. No need for me to trouble myself to please 
customers, I believe in fore-ordination." 

Men are not fools enough for this in temporal con- 
cerns, though plenty of them are so in regard to the 
interests of their immortal souls. No, when they 
see God working for them in nature^ they take 
hold, with a right good will, and work too. And, 
as a general thing, they gain the blessing for which 
they strive. In other wards, they do, in these 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 121 

minor matters, " work with God," to will and to 
do of his own good pleasure ; but when it comes to 
spiritual work, they hold quickly back, and ex- 
claim : '' Oh ! fore-ordination !" But this will be no 
plea for them, when they come forth from their 
graves ^ and when, from mountain and valley, and 
from the dark waves of the sea, they lift up their 
blanched faces to their Judge. Of all the myriads 
who will stand before him, there will not be one 
who will have a word to say — they will "be 
speechless." For five dollars a man will appeal to 
a higher court. He will go from court to court, 
sooner than lose " his rightsP He will have new 
trials, if such a thing can be accomplished, and 
spend three times the sum for which he is contend- 
ing, sooner than he will submit to be wronged out 
of it. Men do not suffer injustice tamely, but here, 
where all that is of value to the never-dying soul 
is at stake, here, just upon the edge of the ever- 
lasting and most dreadful woe; here, where, if 
there was one single consideration which would tell 
for them, they would be most patiently and gladly 
heard, there will not be found one — not one — who 
shall have the assurance to utter a single syllable. 

So clear will be to them the utter folly and will- 
fulness of their self-ruin, that when sentence is 
pronounced, they will turn in dead silence from 
the face of Him who sought them all their lives, 



122 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

and veiling their faces, they will take the plunge, 
from which he could not save them. There will be 
but one expression, and one wail through all that 
endless falling, and that will be : '' Soul, thou hast 
destroyed thyself." 



Becoming a Christian is not becoming better than 
one's neighbor ; it is becoming better than one's 
self. It has no reference whatever to other people. 
No one need to feel, when his neighbor becomes a 
Christian, ^' That man has set up to be better than 
we are now, we will therefore watch him, and see 
how his saintship gets along." 

The language of a man standing here to enter 
the church is not, as many suppose, " I have be- 
come so good that I think it will do for me to 
join myself to Christians." Far from it; his lan- 
guage is, " I have come to see that I am so wicked 
and so helpless that I cannot stand alone. I am not 
fit to stand out in the world. I shall certainly 
perish there. Oh! brethren, I have got my eyes 
open to my danger and my sin; I have had a 
vision of the Lord Jesus Christ, of his love and pity 
for me. I am touched with love for him. I would 
be fashioned by him ; but I dare not stand alone. 
If you can help me, if there is any safety among 
you which in the world I do not know, for the love 



LIVING ^VORD3 FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 123 

of God receive me, and hold me up until I am able 
to sustain myself." 

There are men who come into this church who 
are a great deal worse, in many respects, than some 
others whom I would not vote to admit as mem- 
bers, simply because the first I believe to be Christ- 
ians, and the latter not. 

Suppose five brothers went West to farms, 
bought here ; when they got there, one found his 
farm to be a swamp ; another found his to be full 
of stumps and rocks, with a poor soil when he got 
at it ; another found his rather better, but still 
poor enough ; a fourth found his good land, but 
uncleared; while the fifth had a farm on the rolling 
prairie, with a rich, dark soil that only needed seed 
to yield abundantly. 

. At the end of a year, the man who owned the 
marsh has, by great eflfort and unremitting indus- 
try, got his land drained, manured, and a few acres 
of it under cultivation ; the second has progressed 
a little further, though with less labor ; the third, 
still further ; the fourth has, with one quarter the 
pains and expense of the first, got four times as 
much done ; while the fields of the fifth are laden 
with a rich harvest. He is making money the first 
year. One, judging from appearances of the merits 
of these farmers, might say the man who owns the 
fifth farm is the best farmer. I tell you, nay. Hi 



124 LIVINa WORDS FROM PLYMOUTfif PULPIT. 

is the man for work and for courage who has 
struggled through the disadvantages of that first 
farm, and has made it hegin to bear frait. 

There are some men who are born of a good 
stock ; they have well balanced minds, good 
natural dispositions, and are educated in the very 
hot-beds of piety. When such are converted there 
can be but little change in their conduct. The 
springs and motives of life are touched, and what 
before was done as unto man, or from a mere sense 
of duty or propriety, now flows from love to God. 
Men look at such persons and say, ^^ Well, they ought 
to go into the church ; they will be an honor to it." 
But when the poor, crooked, crabbed, ill-conditioned, 
ill-constructed sinner, who is so bad that it needs a 
whole conversion for every faculty in him ; who is 
possessed not only of seven devils, but of seven 
devils for every one of his powers, comes humbly 
saying, " The love of Christ has touched even my 
heart — oh help me to grow into his image — 
receive even me unto his table," men say, 
'•'Away with him. He'll be no credit to the 
church." 

Now when such a man really does get his own 
consent to be a Christian, and sets resolutely about 
it, he has to worJc for it. He does have " a work to 
do." It takes not one quarter of the religion to 
make perfect saints of men who by nature have 



LIVING^ WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 125 

almost everything done for them, that it does to 
render this other one even decent. 

Emphaticallj, "The first shall be last, and the 
last first." 



There are men who dread religion, because they 
think it circumscribes them. 

Doubtless the life of a mere professor of religion 
is a life of circumscription ; but to one who has the 
love of God within him, there is freedom such as 
no other man can knoAV 

What is there of pleasure or of joy, that is 
worthy of a man, that Zmay not have ? 

Is the air less free, the eartR less beautiful to rde, 
because I am a child of God, and can rejoice in my 
sonship to him who created all things ? 

Is love less to me, because I know and feel that 
it is to last forever? 

Are social pleasures less keenly relished, or 
friendship less valued by me, because I know that 
they will be eternal, and are to brighten forever 
beneath the smile of my God? 

I tell you there is no man that has half the right 
to the things that now are^ that he has who by faith 
and love has laid hold upon the things which are 
to come. To a Christian, earth is both substance and 
shadow. It is, in its better joys, a hint of the perfect 
joys to come. It is a glass into which one may 



126 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

look and see reflections of eternity. It is an utter 
impossibility to have any true and continuous satis- 
faction in life, unless you do feel that you have the 
love of the Giver of Life ; unless you love him. 
If that consciousness is yours, though you be shorn 
of all other joys, that will sustain you ; but the 
probability is, that all other joys will grow firm, 
founded upon that one ; for ours are not the days 
when religion arrayed all earthly power against men ! 



There are men who will not seek for religion 
when no one else is seeking, because they don't 
want to be thought singular — shame working 
through the organ of approbativeness — and then, 
when a revival comes, they won't seek it, because 
they don't want to get excited, and go with a crowd 
— shame working through self-esteem — and thus, 
between those two guards, warding them off from 
the door of salvation, the poor fools perish. 



Many a man, awakening to a sense of his wick- 
edness and trying to do better, finds himself so 
much worse that he cries out in terror of himselt. 

If any of you who are unconverted doubt of 
your need of the help of Christ to curb your sins, 
just try for a few days to do it alone. They will 
give you work of it ! You'll say you never were 
so bad before. Tou never were so universally in 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 127 

rebellion. While your will goes with your selfish 
or evil desires there is no conflict — or none that 
makes much stir and dust. I don't know as water ' 
would ever make any noise if it were allowed to 
flow unobstructed ; but put rocks in its way, let 
logs stick up in the current, dam it up, or in any 
way obstruct it, and then see — such a noise, such 
a commotion, such a determined overflowing as it 
makes ; and it will get out somewhere. So with 
yourselves — as long as your heart is let to flow un- 
disturbedly hellward, there may be but little trou- 
ble ; 3^ou may hardly be conscious that you are a 
rebel at all ; but lay on the bands, mark out the 
bounds, hold in the lines — and what then ? Why, 
then jou will see how desperate is your case, and 
will soon discover that there is none but the Son of 
God that can^help you. Then do not be afraid to 
go to him, because you fear you can't hold out; 
take the flrst step and he'll help you ; when you 
fail and fall he'll always forgive you ; if you are 
strong, and never give over trying to work with him 
against your besetting sins, he has promised, "I 
will never leave thee nor forsake thee." 

Oh ! friends bound with me to the judgment; put 
not this matter aside. I feel that I could plead with 
you till the sun goes down, my heart is so in it 
Talk not, I beseech you, as you go from here, of the 
speaker, the gestures, or the striking passages — talk 



128 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

of the passages that stritck^ or go thinking silently 
of what is to come to every one of you. Let the 
sun go down, and when it is set we will pursue the 
subject, and may God direct his own word and 
truth to the salvation of souls. 



If there is joy in heaven over one sinner that re- 
pents, I don't know what the angels will do now 
' that men everywhere are taking the kingdom of 
heaven by force.* 

How marvellous is that part of the nature of God 
that permits him, while himself so pure and holy, 
to take tenderly to his bosom, and comfort with his 
love, creatures so full of sin as we are. Sinners un- 
regenerated are perplexed by the joy and courage 
of Christians who cannot but be conscious that they 
are yet very imperfect, sinful beings. They do not 
see how we dare to trust in Christ while we yet do 
wrong. If we did no wrong we should have no fur- 
ther need of Christ. Believing on him is not in- 
stantaneous cure from sin; it is release from the 
curse and bondage of it, and surety that the cure is 
coming. Christians are like men with some disease 
upon them ; who have faith in the physician that 
has engaged to heal them, and they lend themselves 
with earnestness to the work of getting well Ee- 

* March, 1858. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 129 

lapses grieve them, but do not discourage. They 
rise up as often as they fall down. They groan and 
long to be delivered from the burden of death 
which is upon them, and they know that deliverance 
will come. 

Sinners, until awakened, don't know that they 
are burdened. They are like sick men with no 
shelter, no physician, no nurse, growing worse and 
worse forever. When they are awakened, their first 
thought and effort is to try to get worthy to come 
to Christ. Could they do that, which none ever 
can do, they would not need him. The point at which 
a man comes to see that he is utterly evil and help- 
less, and consequently turns to Christ as his only 
hope and help, is thepoint at which conversion takes 
flace. On one side of this point a man is a sinner 
without hope ; on the other side he is a Christian. 
A sinner still, to be sure ; but with a certainty of 
healing, rescue, and salvation. 



Men take the world, filled, stuffed as it is with all 
good and beautiful things, very much as gipsies 
would take some glorious mansion, furnished with 
rare taste, and adorned with masterpieces of art. 
The chief room they would attempt to occupy 
would be the kitchen, and they would take the 
treasures of manuscripts, in which were written 

6* 



130 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

wonderful secrets of invention and science, and the 
solutions of great mysteries, to kindle the fire under 
their dinner pot. They would like the pictures, be- 
cause they had oil in them and would burn the 
faster. Thus blind to the higher uses of the things 
of the world are men. And it is the way of God 
never to stir one step from his path to show them 
better. He has given them the faculty to find out, 
and there he leaves them. In the physical economy 
of the world there is provision for all physical 
wants ; but they lie for the most part hidden. Not 
till the earth is scarified and rent, forced open and 
bored into, does she disclose or yield her treasures. 
Near acres of wheat, men may starve ; by the side 
of forests and beds of fuel, they may freeze. God 
will not move one inch, or one finger to save man, 
if he will not, with what he has alreadv done for 
him, save himself. So in the spiritual world, pro- 
vision for all men is plenteously made ; but they 
will be allowed to perish unless they come and 
appropriate it. 

All things are to be had for the taking ; nothing 
without. 

Let no man dare to think, " God, the gentle and 
merciful, will save me, whether I come to his terms 
or not." The whole analogy of life is against the 
thought. God will not save you, body or soul, 
except in appointed ways. It is turn or die. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 131 

Unutterably dreadful is the thought of eternal 
death. Eternal! It is absolutely suffocating. I 
have felt my whole nature revolt against the horror 
of the conception ; and 1 would have disbelieved it 
if I could. But no ! it is true — it is an awful truth, 
and the mentions of it in the Bible are not so much 
threats as merciful disclosures of what lies at the 
end of the sinner's course, that he may be induced 
to flee for refuge to the hope set before nim. Even 
if the passages regarding hell could be made to 
mean something else it would not unsettle my faith 
in this doctrine. It would never be enough for me 
to take these passages of the eternal word, and, 
placing them in the rack, wrench and torture them 
until I made the poor words shriek forth some other 
meaning, unless I could see that the Lord, who is 
dominant over the natural as well as the spiritual 
world, turned aside in that for the sake of helping 
those who in natural things will not " come " to 
what he has appointed for help and healing. 

The ages have rolled and rolled, and through 
them all the sound of the earth's groaning has gone 
up to God, and he has never stirred. Man must 
avail himself of what has been done for him, or he 

m 

must die. God has done all that he will ever do 
in the matter of providing means for salvation. 
The rest is left to man. 



132 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

No man has any business to try to be a Christian 
secretly. The light of love is not one for him to 
hide under a bushel. And, usually, a man's first 
duty after conversion, is to make the fact known 
to the very persons from whom he most wishes to 
keep it. 

I think no sufficient reason has ever yet been 
given for the great reserve felt by us toward those 
persons who are most dear to us. We shrink more 
from saying to our parents, wives, husbands and 
children, the things that lie deepest, than to any 
one else in the world. Why this should be so it is 
not easy to understand. 

I can very well understand how and why a man 
hates to say to his business partner, with whom he 
has long been engaged in cheating people — "I 
have become a Christian." I know that it must 
make him twinge, and feel particularly uncom- 
fortable to stand up and own this, and to have 
his partner say, " Ah ! well, how is it to be 
now about those profits that we have hitherto 
shared between us? Those extra profits — profits 
that we got in those ways^ you Icnow, Am I to 
have them all now ?" 

I call imagine how a liquor-dealer would feel to 
own his conversion, and to hear, ''Well, what are 
you going to do ? — going to join the church?" 

" Tes, if they'll have me." 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 133 

" Going to set up family prayer?" 
" Yes, I shall pray in my family." 
" Well, what else are yoii going to do ?" 
" Why, I shall try to do my duty." 
" Tes, hut about the liquor^ I mean." 
No doubt all this comes hard. But these things 
have got to be met and dealt with. If a man is 
noble he will say, " Kot only will I put out my eye 
if it offends me, but I will put out both eyes ; for 
I have got two eyes opened in my soul that are 
worth more to see with than forty ^ bodily eyes." 



Sins against society — which is money — are felt to 
be very sinful, by those who have the money and 
who mean to keep it. Strike the side of a bee-hive 
and see how the T)ees will swarm out, and buzz and 
buzz to defend themselves. Go on to Wall street 
or Broadway with any indulgences for financial 
sins, and there will be equal buzzing there. Grimes 
are owned to be sins indeed, because they touch 
the material interests of men, or hurt their affec- 
tions — their selfishness ; but when you pronounce 
men sinful in the higher, spiritual sense, they can- 
not feel anything about it. There are greater sins 

* " Forty " and " five hundred " are Mr. Beecher's favorite, and 
most frequently mentioned numbers. He seems to have exempted 
them from his general dislike to figures. 



134: LIVING WC .IDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. • 

and smaller sins, it is true ; but all that is not of 
faith and love is sin. Jonathan as truly broke the 
law of his father the king, by tasting the honey on 
the end of his rod, as if he had slaughtered an ox 
and partaken of its flesh. As long as a man com- 
mits no crime he don't feel himself condemned, 
though his spiritual nature be dumb, dead, petrified. 



There are seasons peculiarly fitted for becoming 
a Christian. There are no feelings or sentiments 
of which the soul is capable but what have their 
tides. They ebb and flow like the sea. This seems 
to be one of the laws of our nature. 

There are times when the popular tide sets 
towards religion ; when all outward circumstances, 
as well as all inward yearnings, conspire to invite 
and even press the sinner towards God. * 

Some persons object to revivals, saying, ''We 
don't believe in feeling and impulse. We think 
religion too serious a matter to be entered upon 
hastily. We think it requires calm consideration." 

Well, you man, twenty; thirty, forty years old, 
you with the grey hairs fast covering you, how 
much longer do you wish to consider? Remember 
that Death sometimes strikes without much con- 
sideration. What if he strikes you ? Where will 
your calm thoughts be then ? 



I 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 135 

Tnilj, 'tis a wise piece of business for a man, 
hano-ino^ bv no more than a siuojl^ hair over the 
bottomless pit, to say to the friend who throws him 
a stout rope, " Wait, I must consider calmly of this 
— I don't believe in being in a hurry." There are 
some cases where consideration is crime — where de- 
liberation is death. Unutterable fools ! that think, 
and think, and only think, upon the borders of 
perdition. The sands beneath their feet are crum- 
bling and shifting away ; but they must think, they 
say, when one calls to them to run. And so they 
pause, and perish. 

Feelings ought to be regarded ; sympathetic 
emotion is good for hearts. As much so in religion 
as elsewhere. 

Kesist not the spirit when your ' heart is tender 
and your thoughts turn in you, and lift themselves 
up towards God. 

What shall we do to be saved? this is now 
the daily -utterance of men's voices. Believe on 
Christ — drop instantly and forever all known sins — 
all meannesses, all dishonesties, all unkindnesses, 
at home and everywhere, all wrong thoughts and 
evil imaginations. Tou never can go in at " the 
strait gate," with any of these clinging to your 
will. 

Do you cry out, " I cannot do this ; the work is 



136 LIVING WORDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

too hard for me — if I quit my sins they won't quit 
me. I cannot say to passion, avarice, selfishness, 
and pride, ' lie down and move no more ;' I cannot 
think right, and act right. I am not ahle to enter 
the gate if this is the way." If you think thus, 
how comes it that you have been putting off this 
matter of repentance to a sick-bed, or to old age ? 
If you cannot reform your thoughts and disposition 
now^ how can you then ? Tou say truly, you cannot 
reform them, and for this cause you need a Saviour. 
But you can remove them, and turn from them, and 
consecrate your whole body and soul to him, and 
he will reform you by aiding all your efforts. He 
will forgive as often as you break down, if you 
carry a steadfast purpose' to conquer self^ for the 
sake of his love. He will not fail j^on, if you are 
sincere in seeking him ; but he will abhor your 
offering if you do not mean to make clean work 
with yourself by laying open your whole heart 
and life to his infl.uence. 

Many shall seek to enter in, and shall not be 
able ; but not hecause of any trouble in the gats^ 
or in the Lord that stands at the head of the way, 
but because they try to carry in their barrels of 
spirit, or their selfishness, or their vile and evil 
dispositions and habits. Such can never enter. 
No rich man can go through that gate carrying 
with him his usury, or his exorbitant rents, wrung 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 137 

from sweating and groaning tenants. No unjust 
judge can go through with his oppressions. But 
there never was, and never will be, a naked, trem- 
bling soul, sincerely sorry for sin, and heartily de- 
sirous of escaping from its power, and to be made 
white in the blood of sprinkling, for which there is 
not abundant room. And yet " Many shall seek 
to enter in and shall not be able." Many, are the 
secret sins of heart and life whose clinging shall 
prevent the sinner. 

Ships, when the tide rises and sets strongly in 
any direction, sometimes turn and seem as if they 
would go out upon it. But they only head that 
way, and move from side to side, swaying and 
swinging without moving on at all. There seems 
to be nothing to hinder them from sailing and 
floating out to sea ; but there is something. 

Down under the water a great anchor lies buried 
in the mud. The ship cannot escape. The anchor 
holds her. And thus are men holden, by the cords 
of their own sins. They go about trying to dis- 
cover some way to be forgiven, and yet keep 
good friends with the devils that are in them. 
And this they call '' being serious." It is almost all 
self-will fighting against the Spirit of God. Now, 
let men be honest with themselves, and if thev 
think their sins, any or all of them, are better than 
the love of God and the salvation of their souls, 



138 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

vv^hy stick to them, that is all; and give up think- 
ing; but if they feel that the redemption of the soul 
is precious, and that it ceaseih forever^ let them 
abandon all that hinders it, .and begin at once to 
work with God for their own salvation. What 
they can do they must do, or be lost, and that is, 
stop all wrong doing that they can stop ; what they 
canH^ Christ will attend to, reforming their in- 
terior dispositions by the love which he will shed 
abroad in their souls. Turn ye, turn ye, for why 
will ye die ? Now is the accepted time — all things 
now are ready. The Lord has brought you nigh 
unto him, and on every side of you men are hasten- 
ing to make their peace with God. Beware how 
you let this opportunity pass. You may not have 
another. What would you say when some great 
steamer had run aground where there was but one 
tide in a year that would float her, if, upon the day 
before that tide came, her officers got together for 
a council, and decided that as there was but one 
tide a year, and they didn't believe in taking advan- 
tage of extraordinary times, that they should make 
no effort to get the ship off. When the tide rose, surg- 
ing and booming about the ship, if they had got up 
steam and set all sail, and worked her giant wheels, 
grating, groaning, and reluctant, she might have 
moved and struggled off into deep soundings. But 
they let the flood tide pass; and the water sank 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 139 

away from the ship's keel, and she cracked and 
parted asunder. 

Anon the beautiful and mighty ship was floating, 
but it was plank by plank, and spar by spar. 

What, I ask, would you think of those officers ? 

But what is a ship when compared to a human 
soul; which, being created, is to go step by step 
with God throughout eternity ; forever rising in 
purity and love, or forever sinking into the black- 
ness of darkness ? 

When you and I, my bearers, stand in the fore 
front of the judgment ranks to hear our doom, 
when all above us and around is the glory and the 
brightness of the Holy City, and all beneath us is 
the blackness of despair, you will not accuse me of 
exaggeration in saying to you that there are none 
so unwise, so blind, so miserably foolish and despe- 
rate, as those who, for any cause, do not first 
attend to the safety of their own souls. With all 
my power I warn you ; with all my strength I 
entreat you ; with all my skill I will aid you. Oh ! 
seek ye the Lord while he may be found. 



»"■ 



I OFTEN find, in talking with people, that they 
are in a state amounting to, or which ought to 
amount to, conversion. They see and feel their sin- 
fulness and need of Christ ; they are prepared to 



140 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

cut off limbs or pluck out eyes in his service. 
They tell me with tears, that they have moments 
of great affectional yearning towards him ; and yet 
they don't " go off." They are waiting to get 
somethiDg more, although they don't exactly know 
what, aboard. When I go and talk with them 
they seem all right ; but I leave them, and they 
stand still. I find them in the same spot day after 
day. Now, there's no use in my going to talk 
with such people. They must get themselves to 
work ; they must begin to do something, as well as 
feel so much. Let them enter upon the Christian 
life at once ; perform every known duty — stop 
every known sin. 

Here is a clock; the works are all right, the 
hands point to the right time, and 'tis all properly 
wound up. Everything is in prime order, and 
ready to go. But it dorCt go. What is the mat- 
ter ? Tou look at it an hour hence, and the hands 
have not stirred. Tou move them forward and 
leave it, and the next hour you have got to set 
them again. This sort of work you may k'^^p at 
forever. As long as the pendulum is not luoved 
the clock won't go. Let that begin to tick, and all 
is at once right and busy. Now, let those persons 
who are all wound up just begin to tick. Start 
your pendulum and the trouble is over. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 141 

There are many persons, and I find them chiefly 
women, who do not experience any deep throes or 
troi^ble in entering the right way. 

Their conviction of sin is not such as catches 
them and plunges them headlong into agonies and 
horrors of great darkness ; but they look on Christ 
and love him, and at once accept him. They have 
a real^ but not particularly powerful knowledge 
that they are lost without him. They are con- 
scious that they are poor and sinful, very much as 
a little child is conscious that he is ignorant, and 
they go to Jesus for riches and righteousness very 
much as the child goes to school for learning. The 
child has faint ideas of how utter is his ignorance ; 
but after he begins to learn he sees it more and 
more. These penitents are but faintly aware 
how deep is their sinfulness until they have begun 
to see as God sees, which is not for some time. after 
he has blessed them with his adoption. Often the 
fact that there was so little struggle in their con- 
version has caused them to doubt its genuineness ; 
and so they have got into great darkness ; but they 
must remember that God leads men to him in ways 
best suited to their own natures and dispositions, 
and while they who are naturally passionate and 
willful, who have more strength than tenderness in 
their dispositions, are often seized and rent like 
him out of whom went the furious devil, and are 



143 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULriT. 

left wallowing upon the eartli before they will look 
to their Saviour, those who are of a gentle and lov- 
ing disposition, whose will has been trained to sub- 
mission, and who have lived chiefly in their higher 
nature all their days, will not, they ought^ not to, find 
it hard to come to Jesus Christ to put their arms 
about his neck, and tell him with gushing love, that 
they give themselves, body and soul, into his keeping. 
Blessed are they who can look upon the Saviour, 
and so instantly feel his goodness and beauty, and 
be so penetrated by his wonderful love, that with 
hardly a thought of self, they run to him and offer 
him. themselves. This is the highest form of con- 
version. Conviction will be sure to be felt by such 
hearts as these every time the thought of what it is 
to grieve such a Saviour touches them. And the 
longer they live the worse will their own sins, and 
all sins, look to them. Let no one then, who has 
enough conviction to honestly desire to forsake sin, 
and to understand that in Christ lies all his help, 
wait for more or for a deeper feeling. If the wind is 
blowing two knots an hour, don't wait till it blows 
ten knots before you start your ship. If there^s 
enough wind to start on, start — be off. If you want 
to come to Christ, come^ don't wait for anything. 
If you can't feel as bad as you want to, don't stop 
on that account. When you've learned to love G^»d, 
you'll feel more than you can ever imagine now 



LIVING WORDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 143 

When serious persons ask me what to read, 1 am 
accustomed to say : " There is a little old book 
called Matthew's Gospel, which I think would suit 
your case. And there are three others which are 
just as good: Mark, Luke, and John." 

Don't go to the side helps of commentaries until , 
after conversion. I think that commentaries foi 
inquirers are like the spider webs of fifty years over 
windows, for sight. You must brush them all 
away before you can see clearly. No book in the 
wide world has been so be-webbed as the Bible. 
Commentaries are very well for those who need 
helps in dates, or in sacred history ; but let the 
awakened sinner go straight to the fountain-head of 
truth — the Bible. And is the reading all? Oh! 
no, read j^^raym^. And here again is where there 
are many and deplorable mistakes made. The 
inquirer, and the young convert, try to pray too 
long and not often enough. They try praying as 
they have always heard the deacon and the minis- 
ter pray, or as their father does ; and then they get 
into great distress because their "thoughts wan- 
der." That is tlie lest thing about it. When they 
attempt to do what for them is as impossible as for 
a lisping babe to converse like a philosopher, their 
thoughts will and ought to wander. If this were 
otherwise, they would but the better play the hypo- 
crite before God by praying things for which they 



144. LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

don't and can't feel the need, and in cold set forms 
of chilling reverence. Now we have a model for 
the prayers of beginners, and 'tis this : " God be 
merciful to me a sinner." You can feel all of that ; 
you see it begins abruptly; and it ends when the 
man is done. 

No " Oh! thou mighty, mysterious and everlast- 
ing Lord." No " Forever and ever, amen !" about 
that. 

Let it be a lesson to you, beginner. Pray what 
you feel, and not one word more. 

Eead on; and if you are perplexed, and your 
thoughts look up, say : " Lord, I can't understand 
this. I pray thee help me." Then stop, if you are 
done. 

Read on ; and if a scene, or an action, or saying, 
of your Saviour touches the fount of feeling, let that 
feeling out, saying freely : "Dear Lord, I love thee, 
for thou truly art worthy !" 

And so on through his whole recorded life, and 
through your own life. Be instant in prayer. 
Warm, true, impulsive, and affectionate in commu- 
nion with your God. 

The utterances of real feeling only are acceptable 
to him. Forced prayer, or insincerity in prayer, is 
like foul odor in his nostrils. 

It is enough that he is willing to forgive us our 
sins, and to excuse the imperfections of our earnest 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 145 

prayers; let ns spare him mockery added to 
sin. • 

If we can't. feel like praying for everybody, and 
for everything, or like praying when we think we 
ought to pray, and if we are sorry that we feel so 
dull and prayerless, let ns say tliat to God, and keep 
silence till we can feel more. God's heart is like 
our hearts — like a parent's heart. Our hearts are 
made by the pattern of his. 

How would a nian like to have his own children 
observe only set times of coming to converse with 
him ? Q)Om\wg frorrb a sense of duty at that ? How 
would he like to have them arrange all that they 
have to say in set and studied forms, very respect 
ful, perhaps, very laudatory, very humble and de- 
vout, but very heartless ? 

Think you that what would cut you to the heart, 
coming from your own offspring, does not at all 
hurt him whose tenderness is the ocean out of which 
your drop is drawn ? 

When I was in Paris, I used to rise early and sit 
at my open window. I always knew when the 
stores beneath me were open, for one was a flower 
store, and from its numberless roses, and heaps of 
mignonnette, arose such sweet, sweet fragrance, 
that it proclaimed what was done. It seems to me 
that Christians should be as a flower store, and that 

7 



146 LIVING WORDS FROM! PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

the odor of sanctity should betray them wherever 
they are. Not that they should go aboufr obtrud- 
ing themselves and their actions on others, with 
the cant of usefulness, but that they should live the 
purity and joy of religion, so that men might see 
the desirableness of it, both for the sake of noble- 
ness, and for the enjoyment both of this world and 
that which is to come. 



Conviction comes upon men in a thousand dif« 
ferent ways ; sometimes a little child climbs upon 
his father's knee, and says, looking up earnestly, 
"Pa, why don't you pray?" I tell you, there's 
many a man would rather a pistol were snapped in 
his face, than to hear that question from a little 
child. 



Do you say: "I want to be a Christian, but 
I'm waiting to be convicted of sin ; it isn't right 
for me to do anything till I've felt myself to be a 
sinner " — then to you I am sent to say, you have 
no right to wait for anything. Begin, this instant, 
to love God, and to act like a Christian. 

" But I carCt^^ you say. 

Ah ! have you come to that knowledge already? 
That is conviction of helplessness in the direction 
of goodness. Just go earnestly and perseveringly 



LIVING WORDS FEOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 147 

to work to act right and to think right, and youT 
get conviction enough. 

You may stand still and wait for it, looking into 
your own heart to see what you are, forever^ and 
not get it; but just try living right, by the rules 
Christ gives, and it will come upon you, so that you 
shall cry out, " God be merciful, and hel'p me ; for 
there is no good thing in me." 

It's everybody's duty to begin at once to live like 
a Christian ; and when they find how they fail of 
all they want to do, they will be convicted; and 
when they give themselves utterly into the hands 
of Christ, they will be converted ; that is conver- 
sion, it won't be becoming perfect^ but it is the first 
step towards perfection. Yon must always keep 
trying to be good, just as hard as if you had all to 
do for yourself; but you must no more be discour- 
aged by failures than if you had nothing to do, for 
you have ahoays^ night and day, an advocate with 
the Father — one who is righteous, though you are 
not — and who will never leave nor forsake those 
who trust in him. Therefore, come boldly to him, 
asking for grace to help in all times of need, and 
Tcnowing^ that though you fall, you shall rise again 



Some people seem to make a merit of great anx- 
iety for their friends ; now there is no merit, and 
no use, and there is positive harm in more anxiety 



148 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

for them than will excite you to do all that you 
can to influence them aright. When that is done, 
and you have committed them to God, then go 
away, 2i\idi feel happy about them. 



We are a singing church, and when we are 
dead, and men come and scrape the moss from our 
graves, they will say : " These were Christians who 
sang much." 



You are planting seeds for the future as you sing 
these hymns. Were you to go away to Oregon 
next year, this book, out of which we have all sung 
together, would be a hundred books to you; how 
it would make you remember these morning meet- 
ings, these lectures, these Sabbaths. 



While Brother was praying,* the words, 

" Come up hither," came to me. As I wondered 
what it meant, instantly it opened up to me in this 
way. 

Suppose that I had gone away from here for 
years, and came back to find my daughter living 
in some low, obscure place, bound out to hard labor 

* In a prayer-meeting. 



LIVING WOEDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 149 

for people who took no notice of her ; or worse, 
noticed her only to abuse her. Suppose my son 
were in another place, half clothed, half fed, and 
suffering all manner of ill treatment. And thus 
with all my children. 

What should I be likely to do ? Should I not at 
once set about lifting them out of such situations, 
and getting them up where I was, I should say to 
them, 

" Come up, my children ; you were not born to 
live down there. Your place is where I am. Come 
up here to me ; here is where you belong." 

Well, this is what God is doing to men. He has 
a few, a very few children living in the high places 
of spiritual life — those regions of hope and love 
where he liimself dwells. 

But most of his earthly family dwell far below, 
and he is constantly coming down to seek for 
them. 

He looks in the region of awe and reverence, in 
the region of conscience, in that of despondency 
and fear ; yes, he even goes down cellar after them, 
and sometimes can't find them even there. But 
wherever he does find them, he says to them : 

" Come up hither — come up into the region of 
warmth and love, where your Father dwells. You 
were not made to live down there. This is whero 
you belong. Come up hither." 



150 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

We must not settle down indolently to wait for 
God to make fruit grow in us. He never does 
anything for us in regard to character without our 
cooperation. Work out your own salvation with 
fear and trembling, not servile fear, or abject 
trembling, but with such eagerness as men often 
feel in an engrossing work they are so eager about 
that their nerves quiver a little. It is in doing 
our duties, and bearing our trials and vexations, 
that Christ is with us, and will dwell in us for our 
comfort ; but he will not dwell in us in any such 
way as that we shall have no more trouble and 
pain in struggling with our passions, our failings, 
our avarice, our pride, and all our besetting sins. 
It is by fighting and overcoming these that we get 
to be fruitful. " Work out your own salvation 
with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh 
in you, both to will and to do of his own good plea- 
sure." These things God put together, and no man 
ought to put them asunder. As you climb dijQ&cult 
hills your prospects will be brighter and clearer ; but 
not until you have gained the highest peak of expe- 
rience will you be able to see, from horizon to 
horizon, the presence with you of God ; and then 
you will soon begin to descend ; for it is generally 
not until near death that the Christian gets a view 
like this. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 151 

The great truth which God is driving through 
our times, as with a chariot of fire, is the import- 
ance of man ! When this truth comes up to the 
church, does she welcome it ? No ! oh no — she 
cannot attend to new comers ; she is busy in the 
smoke-house of theology, dusting the flitches of old 
truth which have hung there for ages. 



A GRAND mistake of the old reasoners in their 
arguing for the goodness of God, was that they 
tried to prove that in the world there is more evi- 
dence of design for happiness than there is of 
design for pain. 

Now that position cannot be maintained. There 
is just as much evidence of a design to produce 
pain as to produce pleasure. 

For every adaptation for pleasure that you will 
show me I will undertake to show you one for pain. 
This life is clearly rudimentary. Men are here to 
be hammered into something of worth in the next 
state of existence. Pleasure is to be desired or 
expected but as incidental. Earth is not the place 
ioY pleasure. It is the place where men are fash- 
ioned for eternity. A piano factory is not the place 
to go to in order to hear music. Suppose a man 
were to start for some great piano manufactory, 
with the expectation of being enchanted when 
there by innumerable Thalbergs. 



152 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

He goes along dreaming of the divine harmo- 
nies which will greet him when he approaches the 
place where these sweet-toned instruments are 
made. 

lie anticipates as much more of delight than 
Thalberg had given him, as there are more instru- 
ments in the factory than were on the boards of the 
concert hall. 

" I am going to the place where all those pianos 
are made," he says, as he hastens on. " They turn 
out hundreds of them in a day. Oh ! how will all 
sweet, bewildering sounds entrance my senses when 
I draw near. Hymns and songs of never-wearying 
melody will leap out at me from every door and 
window." 

He comes in sight of the building, and instead 
of hymns and choral melodies, he hears harsh 
noises. There are heavy poundings, gratings, saw- 
ings, and raspings. There are legs, uncouth and 
clumsy, to be worked into proper size and graceful- 
ness. There are strings to be tried, and separate 
parts to be fitted and knocked together ; there are 
great, heavy packing-boxes to be made, and vari- 
ous other awkward and noisy work to be done. 

Tools are thumping about ; cords and tackling 
rattling ; plenty of confounding noises, but no 
music. 
The man stands and sees the workmen ply the 



LIVING WOEDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 153 

hammer, and saw, and file, and puncli, and chisel, 
and auger ; he sees dust, boards, and shavings fly- 
ing in all directions. Clatter and clatter surround 
him. 

From the windows come broken bits of board, 
wire, and iron; also all the different notes of 
racket and din ; but he hears no sweet melody. 

Then the man says in astonishment, "Do they 
call this a piano manufactory — this confused 
place, full of all jangling noises? No, no; this is 
no piano producing establishment. This is only a 
dusty and noisy workshop." 

Yes, it is a workshop, where are being fashioned 
the instruments, which, when touched by skillful 
fingers, have power to enchant the world. 

But it is not the platform on whichMhey are to 
le played. Not there are they to give forth their 
sweet harmonies. 

We are In the workshop of humanity. We see 
evidences of this, turn which way we will. 

Evidences are numerous of a design of founding 
us. We must feel the mallet and the saw ; the 
punch and the bore. We must be split, and ground, 
and worked smooth. The pumice and the sand- 
paper are for us, also, as well as for the things we 
fashion ; and at last^ when we are all set together, 
polished, and attuned, we shall be played upon by 
the music-waking inflRences of heaven. 

7* 



154 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

Fighting faults is the most discouragiug thing 
in the world. 

"When corn reaches a certain height, no more 
weeds can grow among it. The corn overshadows 
and grows them down. Let men fill themselves 
full of good tilings. Let them make their love and 
purity and kindness to grow up like corn, that every 
evil and noxious thing within them may be over- 
shadowed and die. 



Men are not put into this world to be everlast- 
ingly fiddled on by the fingers of joy. 



Those persons who do most good are least con- 
scious of it. The man who has but a single virtue 
or charity is very milch like the hen that has but 
one chicken. That solitary chicken calls forth an 
amount of clucking and scratching that a whole 
brood seldom causes. 



Sometimes, when mists conceal the bed of a river 
in which work is to be done, or which is to be 
forded, men are placed in the tops of trees along its 
banks, that they may look across, and sing out to 
those below, " Go on ; you are in the right way. 
We see the other shore, though you cannot. .March 



LIVING WORDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 155 

on." Thus has God put look-outs in the trees along 
the banks of the River of Death. 

Not many — many are not needed ; but in every 
Christian community there are some men who can 
see clear across the misty waters to the shores of 
heaven. God says to them, " Bear witness. Call 
cheerily out unto your brothers who cannot see for 
the fog through which they are walking. Tell them 
that all is right. Tell them not to flag or fear ; that 
they are in the right way, and that the shore is not 
hard to gain if, only, they jpress onP 

One such man in the tree will do for the encour- 
agement of hundreds below in the river. 

There was but one Moses to the thousand of 
Israelites that entered the Jordan. 



Young Christian, do you want a prophecy of the 
future ? I'll tell you how to get it. In the first 
place, let the future alone^ then call to your heart, 
" Heart, art ready for each large or small duty of 
to-day ? If your heart answers, as bells do him who 
strikes them, if it cry lustily, and with no tarrying, 
" Heady, aye, ready !" and if this is, day by day, 
its sincere cry, you have your prophecy. You will 
not be troubled about dyii% when you are dying. 

When Joseph sent for his father to come to 
Egypt, he sent men, and chariots, and horsemen, 



156 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

and provisions, all in profuse abundance. He 
didn't suppose that the old patriarch could journey 
with only his staff for company, finding himself by 
the way ; and do you think that when God sends 
for you he will provide less bounteously for the 
journey to his home ? No, no ; when your work is 
ended, when your royal day has come, you shall 
have cause to cry out, in rapturous praise. Sufficient ! 
sufficient ! sufficient ! is the escort which thou hast 
provided to bear me over to the Heavenly Land. 



If you really wish to know your faults, ask your 
enemies. What your friends will never tell you (in 
that not acting the true part of friend) your enemies 
will. "When they aim an arrow, it will be at the 
place where there is a break in your harness. They 
can hit the sore place in you with unerring aim. 



Where Christianity is fruitful of speculations and 
barren of good conduct, infidels always abound. 



It is not death but life that we long for when we 
sigh to flee ^way and h% at rest. 

When we think of the grave, of the chill and 
ghastliness of death, we cannot say that we are so 
willing to try it ; but when we lewp the grave^ sink 



LIVING WORDS FEOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 157 

the very memory of it, and land safe over in 
heaven, then, indeed, are we^ready, aye, longing 
to depart. 

How skillfully does Paul sail past the two 
unpleasing points, without touching too hard on 
either. "It is not that we would be unclothed, but 
that we would be clothed upon." 

It is not desirable to be borne away alone, to lie 
and moulder in the cold, damp grave; but itis 
desirable, soon as may be, to enter heaven. 



When you can make an oak out of a mushroom, 
then, and not till then, you may hope to make a 
living tree out of that poisonous toadstool, the the- 
atre. 

It was, even among the heathen nations, con- 
sidered a disgrace to be connected with one; and 
down through all the thousands of years which it 
has lived since then, it has come with perpetual 
dishonor on its head. 



Men say we must be honest ; it is our duty. But 
they think there is no duty about being happy any 
more than about having fine weather. The weather 
is just as it happens, and so they suppose it is about 
happiness. But I tell you there is no more positive 
command in the Bible than this reiterated one, 



158 LIVING W(, IDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

" Rejoice in the Lord alway ; and again I say 
rejoiced And this rejoicing is not to be in plea- 
sure and profit, in good prospects, or in sunny days, 
but " in the Lord," a joy that shall be independent 
of circumstances — a joy that men shall be obliged 
to confess must come of religion. A Christian is 
indeed allowed to rejoice where other men can; but 
he is bound to rejoice where other men cannot. 

Who cannot rejoice when he holds his first-born 
to his breast? But, Christian, you are to rejoice 
when you bend, with falling tears, over his coffin. 
Weep ! it is your right ; but " rejoice in God." 

Who cannot rejoice when he walks with his 
bride smiling beside him ? But you are to rejoice 
when she lies stiffened in death on her bier. 

Do you say it is impossible for you thus, at will, 
to banish sorrow, and recall joy ? 

It is not impossible. You cannot do it as you 
can will your eye to open or shut ; but you can do 
it by controlling the causes of things. 

You can live in such abiding consciousness -of 
eternity, that time and the things thereof shall be 
to you but as pictures hung up in a hall, which may 
all be taken away without touching you. 

When losses come upon you, you may and ought 
to sorrow for pain of present bereavement, but you 
should rejoice with a joy which no man may take 
from you, in the promise that all of yours which is 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 159 

worth having will be restored to you, where it will 
be dearer and better than ever. 

Live so that your peace and joy shall be the 
'' light " that shall shine on men, showing them the 
power of religion thus^ rather than by seriousness 
and gloom of face and temper. 



You are not to follow after happiness as an end 
of life. So sure as you do this, you will never be 
happy. But be happy while you work with God. 
Te are the temples of God. Be cheerful while 
you help your Master Builder to perfect his tem- 
ple. 

Under all discouragements, bear up cheerfully, 
remembering that it is by trouble that God puts 
temper into the steel. If it will not bear tempering, 
it is not worth much. He has promised, once for 
all, " I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee ;" and 
has declared, " There hath not entered into thy 
heart the joys that are laid up for them that love 
me." What need we more ? 

What feeble and ungrateful wretches we are, not 
to be able to rejoice always, when we have such 
joys before us. 

Much harm has been done by the idea that a 
certain gloom, and a restriction of the lively emo- 
tions, bear some relations to piety. 



160 LIVING WOKDS FROM i»LYMOUTH PULPIT. 

These bear the same relation to it that rust doea 
to the sword-blade — they eat into it. 

The -command, " Be sober," does not mean be 
unmirthful. 



I WOULD rather break stone on the road, were it 
not for the disgrace of working in a chain-gang, 
than to be one of those beings who are so rich that 
they have nothing to do but to " seek happiness," 
as they call it 

The " upper class," as they style themselves, are 
i\iQ flies of humanity \ and if there could be some 
great fan invented to sweep them all out of the 
way, it would be a benefit to the world. 

The working of such a fan would be a very good 
business for somebody. 

And yet these beings presume to make society's 
laws. I must repeat, as the only true description 
of them that 1 know in the English language 
Pope's lines — " If the gods be monkeys, what must 
the people be ?" 



What does Paul mean in saying, " I am perse- 
cuted, but not forsaken?" It's a very pleasant 
thing, sometimes^ to be persecuted — it's delicious ! 
When a man has his own house, and his family 
around him, as much salary as he can spend, and 
more friends than he knows what to do with, it is a 



LIVING WOKDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 161 

pleasant excitement, when breakfast is over, to open 
the papers and look to see how he is "persecuted;'^ 
but this was not the way with Paul. He was 
driven out, and hunted up and down ; he had 
neither father, mother, wife, sister, brother, nor 
constant companion, save his dark-browed jailer- 
yet he did not feel forsaken. He was troubled on 
every side, yet not distressed. 

As a mailed warrior might stand amid flying 
darts from Indian bows, feeling them hurtling and 
rattling against helmet and corselet, and shield, and 
falling about him like hail, until they were piled a 
thousand high, and yet smile, saying : " They hit 
me indeed ; I am pelted and shot at of the archers, 
but I am not hurt.'^^ So stood Paul in his armor of 
proof. 

A man in the lists fights first with lance and 
spear ; then, dropping these, he seeks in the closer 
contest, with the shorter dagger, to stab and kill. 
Then flinging this away closes in the deadlier grap- 
ple. Then the two sway and bend, and topple to 
their fall, each struggling to overthrow his enemy, 
knowing well that who goes down is tJie dead 
man. 

They reel, they stumble, they fall, and at the 
overthrow one feels the knee of the conqueror on 
his breast, and sees the deadly steel shortened 
above his heart. Thus was it with Paul — ^yet there, 



162 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

lying prostrate in the dust, dying by cruel hands, 
he uttered his voice, and its triumphant joy comes 
ringing down the path of ages, to teach us how, in 
the loss of all things, to rejoice in God. 

Ah ! look not in the throne for strength. 

The prisoner in the dungeon w^as mightier than 
the king. He that was under the throne was 
stronger than he that sat upon it. 



We are not to seek pain ; but when it is sent to us 
we are not to fret and grumble at it, but try and go 
cheerfully along, as though we did not feel it. It is 
for our good, our purification — for nothing is so 
purifying as pain, if it be rightly borne. 



Suppose I could have these faces gathered and 
brought to me, and could hold them thus, and 
should ask: "Whose image and superscription is 
stamped on this face ?" 

" Care marked this face," would be the (fre* 
quent) ansv/er. 

" Who marked this one ?" 

"I'retfulness." 

"And this?" 

« Selfishness." 

"This?" 



LIVING WOEDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 163 

" Suffering stamped this.'' 

" What this V 

"Lust! lust!-' 

"And this?" 

"Self-will." 

" And who stamped this face ?" I should ask of 
one — a rare and sweet one. 

" This ! why where did you get it ? Whose face 
is this ? — how beautiful ! It is marked by the sweet 
peace of a contented spirit." I never saw more 
than a dozen of these in my life. 



The change from a burning desert, treeless, 
springless, and drear, to green fields and blooming 
orchards in June, is slight in comparison to that 
from the desert of this world's affection to the 
garden of God, where there is perpetual tropical 
luxuriance of blessed love. 



I HAVE heard people say, " What a fortunate cir- 
cumstance it was that that trouble came to-day, 
just as I was so well prepared to meet it. I really 
don't think I could have borne it if it had come at 
some other time." Very true; you could not. 
God knew that, and he did not send it upon you 
until he had prepared you to bear it. It was fortu- 
nate for you that he thus cared for you ; yet you 



164: LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

speak as if its coming just at that time were all 
accidental. 

H-li-h-h-m ! what a fortunate thing it was for the 
tree that there hajojpened to be a blossom just where 
the fruit wanted to grow; and what a fortunate 
thing it was that a bud happened to grow just 
where the blossom wanted to open. 

It is a fortunate thing for my head that I've got 
a neck ; and it is a very fine thing for my neck that 
Fve got shoulders, and trunk and limbs under it ; 
and a fine thing for all these that JL've got feet to 
move them all about upon. I don't know what I 
should have done if things had not happened to 
come just as they did. 

These things do not come one whit more along 
the line of sequences than did your strength made 
equal to your day. 

That was God's promise fulfilled and you refused 
to see it. Your privilege is to be troubled about 
nothing. " Work well to-day ; there all your duty 
lies." 

Don't imagine trouble; don't borrow it; don't 
die before your time. When God wants }uu to 
die he will show you how to do it easy. 



Tou come to church to be told how to be the 
saint ; you go out into the world to le it. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 165 

There is a question in the air that no set of men, 
be they of what sect they may, can steer qmte 
clear of in their talk. 

This question is sizzling everywhere. Hush it 
up, cover it down, as you please, it will keep burst- 
ing out. 'Tis bubbling up on all sides of you. 
Tou must agitate it. 

God is in this thing, doing what I have all along 
prayed that he would do, viz., working in a way that 
will make all parties feel thai) the thing is not of man. 

He has overturned the plans both of agitators 
and of quietists; but still he is putting on the 
spurs. He is forcing men to agitate the matter ; 
and until they do it, he will agitate them. 

Order and quiet are good things, when they can 
be had without the sacrifice of things that are bet- 
ter. But who says, when he looks upon the splen- 
did marble buildings that adorn our cities, that all 
the noise, dust, and rubbish which obstructed the 
sidewalks, while those buildings were rising, had 
better not have been made, even though the price 
of unbroken neatness and order had been the per- 
petual continuance of the old, rat-riddled shanties, 
which were once where those palaces now stand ? 



^Ew England is the right arm of the States, 
and Boston is the hand of that arm. 
That arm is now outstretched, and that mighty 



166 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

hand is clenched to give a death-blow to slavery. 
I never felt so willing to drop my oars as now. 
Who would TOW when he could go hy sailing f 
Here is a letter from a southern slaveholder, a 
woman, who has written to me, me! for advice as 
to how to get rid of the slaves in a way which shall 
make them free, and not utterly impoverish her- 
self. 

When southern slaveholders write to me on such 
a subject as this, then I say it is not hard for us to 
believe that the millennium is drawing nigh. 



To have God and the things of eternity con- 
sciously always in mind is impossible. 

There is no provision, either in nature or grace, 
for such a state of things. 

But to have him in our hearts, as the governing 
power of our lives, and to carry our love for him, 
consciously and unconsciously, as a mother carries 
the love of her first-born child, is what is our privi- 
lege and our duty to do, and our only safety. The 
mother thinks of ten thousand things which, for the 
time, must crowd her babe out of her mind ; but 
never does she get free of the influence that her 
love for him has over her. We must make these 
natural loves our teachers of how we are to be 
filled with the love of God. We may go up by 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 167 

them till we are far, far above them in regard to 
what we feel for him, who has all loves in himself; 
but we never need to attempt impossibilities, for 
he will have no such worship. Eemember grace is 
only nature ilossomed out} it is no new thing 
grafted in upon nature, but nature won and warmed 
into its true growth; that for which the God of 
nature made it. A Christian is one brought back to 
true growing. Educate your children aright, inure 
them to hardness. Make them to be like the wil- 
low tree, that when broken from the parent stem, 
they may immediately root themselves wherever 
they strike ground, and bravely flourish on their 
own responsibility, instead of being forever graft- 
ing themselves on your old trunk and limbs. 
Don't make women of your sons ; for thus would 
they have all woman's weakness, without her regal 
excellence. 

A woman made of a woman is God's noblest 
work ; but a woman made of a man is his meanest 
one. 



There is no religion in the Bible — ^I hope if 
there are any reporters here, that they will wait 
until I finish my sentence before they run to the 

' paper — any more than there is a road upon 

the guide-board. The Bible is the rule, the direc 
tion, by which man is to work out his own salva- 



168 LIVINO WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

tion, as the guide-board is the direction by whicn 
he is to walk out his journey. Religion is in the 
man^ or it is not anywhere. 



Eeliqion should not be used as calking, some- 
thing to stuff into the cracks and crevices of a 
man's life ; but it should be regarded and used as 
the very warp and woof of life. 



When all goes smoothly, men imagine them- 
selves fully equal to driving their own team ; but 
when their affairs begin to run away with them, 
they cry out quick enough, *' Where's God? 
Where's God ?" 



It ought to grow more and more easy to Christ- 
ians to do right, until at last the acts that were 
sore self-denial become a pleasure. 

When this has come to pass do not be frightened, 
and begin to doubt your piety. Be glad and 
grateful, for your graces are growing ripe. 

What was once sour and bitter has become 
sweet and agreeable. 

When you first entered the Christian path, you 
found it hard to do those things as conscience com- 
manded, and you were often tempted to cry out : 



» 



LIYING WOKDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 169 

" Thj paths are not the paths of peace, O 
GDd !" 

You were as children who, hearing their father 
'diicourse of the rare and luscious apples that his 
orchard yielded, straightway ran thither, expecting, 
though it was in the early summer, to be able to 
ju<tge of the flavor of the fruit. Biting into it, they 
cry with wry features, spitting* and casting the 
apples to the ground. " Is this the perfumed, 
saccharine flavor our father talks of? We want no 
more of it." 

The miser, when converted, finds that he must 
be a miser no more. He sees, perhaps, that duty 
requires him to give fifty dollars to a poor man. 
He wishes that twenty-five would do ; but it won't 
do. He knows that. He puts his hand into his 
pocket and — considers. He tries to go away with- 
out giving the sum. 

" Do it — do it," growls conscience from within. 

The man casts down the money hastily, and runs 
away. 

That was a victory, but a hard and painful one ; 
and the miser finds himself put through years of 
just such discipline, until at last he is a miser no 
more. 

Giving has become a blessing and a pleasure to 
his heart. Shall he now say, dolefully ? ^' I fear 
I am not a true Christian. I cannot see that I 

8 



170 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

carry any cross, or deny myself anj^, as once I 
did. Why, I remember when it was like cruci- 
fixion to give away five dollars. But I overcame 
nature and gave it, and then I had sure evidence 
that the root of the matter was in me. But now — 
oh ! I'm so much at ease now, something must cer- 
tainly be wrong ; nothing seems to try me." 

"Why, man, your graces are growing fully ripe ; 
or take another figure. 

It is a great trick among the boys to ferule each 
other in order to harden their palms preparatory 
to blows thereon from the teacher. 

It's a good thing sometimes to have the palms 
hardened. Yours have been hardened so that giv- 
ing does not hurt them now. 



There are localities where the gnats, flies, and 
mosquitoes are so thick that a man cannot see for 
them. They swarm about his head and eyes in 
such blinding numbers that it is utterly in vain to 
try to seek for anything upon the ground. 

Thus, I think, it is with the Bible. It has 
been so beswarmed by commentators that it is 
next to impossible to think of a text without 
instantly hearing the buzz, buzz, buzz, of five hun- 
dred constructions and explanations, each one of 
which is further from being any help than the 
others are. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 171 

Our real commentators are our strongest traits 
of character ; and nsuallj, we come out of the 
Bible with such of its texts sticking to us as our 
idiosyncrasies attract. 

The texts we least need are the ones we like best, 
and remember longest. A kind-hearted, la2y man 
will remember '' Blessed are the merciful," long 
after he has forgotten the injunction to be " di- 
ligent in business." 

Health underlies all there is of a man. I think 
a man ill-bodied cannot think healthily. It would 
surprise people to seeliow many things which have 
shaken the world with controversy, and burdened 
it with error, had their origin in indigestion. It is 
humbling, but it is true, that the action of the mind 
depends upon the state of the sinews and the 
blood. To be sure, there have been cases in which 
from a diseased body the mind has shone out 
strong and good, triumphant over fleshly ill; but 
these are not the rule. No man would think of 
going into battle with a handful of unarmed men, 
because such have won victories; or of going to 
sea in an unrigged ship because dismasted and 
dismantled vessels have come safely into port. 
Health is a duty. If a man would carry his mind 
aright, and have it work with power ^ let him seek 
to be healthy. 



172 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

Christians all want to have graces, but they are 
not SO willing to take what is necessary in order to 
obtain them. The pale think it a fine thing to be 
painted — all the lovely flowers and gay colors so 
skillfully laid on by the cunning hand of the artist; 
but when it comes to being daubed all over with 
some dark substance, when the very gold that is 
upon them becomes as black as ink ; when they are 
thrust into the heated furnace, how then ? how then f 

Christians are like vases, they must pass through 
the fire ere they can shine. And often the very 
furnace and the flame which they call destruction, 
is only burning in the graces which are to be their 
everlasting beauty and glory. 



N"oT so much is it mv/ih working as it is easy 
working, which tells. If a man only knows how 
to use himself, if he use all his faculties in duo 
measure, he will scarce ever tire. Most men use 
but very few of their faculties. They are like a 
man who owns a tower in which are thirty bells ; 
but he never attends to them. By and by there 
comes a day on which he would rejoice, and he 
goes to ring his bells. He draws this rope and 
that, but there is no response, or only a jingle now 
and then, from some cracked and rusty bell. 

At last, from one great, hoarse throat, at the 



LIVING WORDS FJROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 173 

top of the tower, comes crashing out a heavy 
sound. 

That bell is the only one of the whole thirty that 
will ring. 

Or, men are like houses, huilt very high, but 
which the owner had no means o^ furnishing higher 
than the first story — and there he lives, his upper 
chambers all going to rack and ruin. Or they are 
like ships well freighted and furnished, when they 
started out from port, but which, when they near 
their other harbor, have nothing left of them but 
their hull. They have made fuel of everything 
within themselves. They are self-consumed.^ 



A man's worth should be reckoned by what he 
is, not by what he has. 



A WISE man is one that knows how to turn to 
good account the knowledge which he has. Se is 
not wise who has mastered all languages, all sci- 
ences, if he lacks the ability to use this knowledge. 
He is only stuffed. 

Thb man who tries to cut himself and square his 
conduct merely by the outward pattern of morality, 
is as the artist who, instead of studying his art from 



174 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

the boundless and glorious pictures God has painted 
on the earth and in the sky, goes into some dim 
gallery, and pores over what hangs there until he 
can badly imitate the stiff drapery, uncouth figures, 
inhuman adults, and monstrous pumpkin-headed 
children, that the canvas before him exhibits. Ha ! 
you love to laugh at the artists ; but what do you 
think the angels do at you^ who prostitute not 
merely your fingers and imaginations, but your 
whole spiritual nature, to the work of making, not 
bad pictures, but bad, incomplete, poverty-stricken 
men. "Is not morality good, as far as it goes?" 
say you. '' Yes, certainly, as far as it goesP 
" Isn't my cable as good as yours, as far as it goes ?" 
says the sailor who has a short cable to him who 
has one very long. "Yes," says the other, " as far 
as it goes ; but what of that, when it won't go within 
fifty fathoms of bottom." And of what use, oh, 
moralist, is your cable, when it will not go within 
fifty fathoms of the place where it can take hold 
upon the soul's anchorage ? 



I don't blame a man for not understanding the 
mysteries of God any more than I should blame one 
who was standing in the Atlantic Ocean for saying, 
'' I can't." 

" Can't ^Aai/" 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 175 

" I cannot, ^^ 

■' Not what ?" 

'I've been in ankle deep, and knee deep, and 
lt...gli deep ; I've been in all over, and: it's no use ; I 
never can wade across the Atlantic Ocean." 

'^ Of course you can't — nobody told you to. 
What did you try for ? God never meant to have 
you do it, or he would have made it more shal- 
low." 

Just in this way do men act in regard to doc- 
trines. They go out a little way on election, and 
back they come, shaking their heads, and saying, 
" It's very mysterious ; I can't understand it." 
Then they try free agency, then decrees, etc., but 
they have no better success with them. Well, 
what of it ? Man, by all his searching, cannot find 
out God. I am not ashamed to say that I do not 
understand his mysteries. I believe that what he 
says is true, if I cannot reconcile it. My own con- 
sciousness agrees with the most seemingly contra- 
dictory passages concerning free will and sover- 
eignty. I know that I am free, that by my own 
choice I perform.moral acts. That with me lies the 
power of sinning or refraining from sin, and yet 
when I go forth with my most buoyant sense of 
freedom to think and act, I am conscious of influ- 
ences, of barriers which say, " Thus far, and no 
further." 



176 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

I feel in my very nature that I am free, and yet 
that I do not direct my own steps, nor appoint my 
own bounds. I cannot reconcile this. 1 know it ; 
and there it must rest. 

God does us no violence. He uses us through 
the very nature which he gave to us, and through 
our free will. 

The mulberry leaves are stripped from the tree, 
and the food which they make for the worm acts 
upon it according to its own nature. As their na- 
ture dictates, the worms spin their cocoons and 
sleep in them. 

Then, when the little spinners have been de- 
spoiled, the loom is made and the silk is woven and 
stamped by the skill of man. Everything has been 
used according to its nature in the construction of 
the silk. 

And the web which God is weaving, and the 
pattern with which he will mark it, will all be 
done in the same way. 

The whole plan is in his mind now, and it will 
result as he intends, but only through the free 
action of the nature he has given to man. His 
plan embraced this idea from the very beginning 
of things, and every contingency is provided for in 
the eternal mind. 



A man is better than a peer, a prince, or a king. 



LIVING WOEDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 177 

Some ministers are forever hammering out doc- 
trines, making ploughs with which thej do no 
work after they are made. 

Now Zmake ploughs ; but when I have finished 
them, I don't lay them away to be taken out and 
re-beaten the next year. 

No ; my business is to put handles in my plough, 
and then to fasten to it a team strong as eternity, 
and then to force it deep, deep into the soil, and 
rip, rip, rip, ousting the vermin, scattering the 
moles and nibbling mice, and making broad fur- 
rows, in which I may sow seed. 

Doctrinal furrows are good for nothing unless 
they are planted, and doctrines should not be 
preached so high that they are above the head of 
everybody who walks on the ground. 



It is by trouble that God puts temper into the 
heart. 



Each living man bears a relation to his whole 
race. His having lived will never cease to be felt 
throughout the universe. No man can live unto 
himself. We own each. other, and God owns us all. 
A man never stands alone unrelated to anything; 
but his closest relation is always to his Creator. 

A willow tree may stand far from the banks of 
8* 



178 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

the stream, and with no apparent support, except 
from the ground about its trunk. But what are its 
roots doing? Down burrowing amid the rocks — 
forcing a way through the earth, seeking for open- 
ings — pushing whithersoever is the smell of moist 
soil — diving to the level of the cool well, and drink- 
ing deep of its nourishing waters, shooting out by 
the brookside, many, many rods away, till its banks 
are fringed like a shawl, seeking everywhere for 
the nutriment which gives life to the tree above 
them, is what the roots are doing ; and man is like 
a tree, only his roots shoot upward as well as down- 
ward, and his firmest tie is to the heart of God, as his 
surest and best supply is from thence. 

Who then can say, '*! am mine own; I stand 
alone uninfluenced and un influencing." 



There is little hope of ever uniting men on doc- 
trines or ordinances. 

I think I can see in the New Testament authority 
for Episcopacy, for Presbyterianism, and for Con- 
gregationalism. To me it seems, therefore, that 
the Apostle's idea was that the churches should be 
governed according to their necessities, taking one 
form, or another, as was best suited to them. 

The only ground on which all Christians can 
have perfect union is the ground of love. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 179 

Why, a little while ago they gathered themselves 
together from the four corners of the earth to form 
one great Christian union ; and the very first thing 
they did after they were assembled, was to disfran- 
chise the whole band of Quakers — among whom 
God has his saints and angels, if he has any on 
earth. May they not have been permitted to pre- 
sent to the world this absurd spectacle for the pur- 
pose of showing the impossibility of Christians 
uniting on mere grounds of opinion. Love is 
the only fusing power in the universe — all may 
meet there. 

Three naturalists once went into the woods to 
find a nightingale's nest. When they had found it, 
each took from his pocket his favorite work on or- 
nithology and began to describe the looks and the 
size of the nightingale that was not there. All 
gave a different description, and they quarrelled 
over the empty nest, and tore each other's books, 
and made a great noise. But now from the thicket 
where she had been resting, the bird began to pour 
a flood of song. The disputers stopped to listen. 
The very leaves quiver in the gush of melody 
— the waves of air are moved — the forest is bathed 
in music as in a flood. When a hush falls around 
them — for the song is done, tho men straightway 
shut their books and go home. 

Men read about God, and his character, and 



180 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

they try to think about it, and undertake to de 
scribe it, and finally they get to quarrelling about 
what none of them at all understand. But some- 
times when the truth shines out clearly on them, 
they forget all their supposed wisdom, and in silence 
go their ways to love and to adore. 



Suppose that I knew a body of men conspicuous 
for their faith, hope, love, gentleness, generosity, 
etc., but before I gave them my confidence I 
wanted to dig down a little deeper than practical 
life, and I said, " My dear sirs, what are your ideas 
concerning the Trinity ?" 

" Well," they reply, '' we don't know much 
about that. In fact, we have no theory in regard, 
to it." 

I then question them in regard to the "per- 
severance of saints." 

" We have all been so busy trying to persevere 
that we haven't had time to study upon the doc- 
trine," is the answer. And so on to the end of the 
doctrines. 

Then, in order to be orthodox, I should have to 
shake my head at them and say ; 

" You may escape into heaven, so as by fire ; but 
I don't know, I don't know — I will pray for you." 

" Sound doctrine," says Orthodoxy, " is the found- 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 181 

ation of religion." No such thing — Jesus Christ 
is the foundation of religion. Doctrine is the most 
delusive goblin that ever existed, when it is in the 
hands of certain men. They frame a form for 
Truth, and when she has outgrown and forsaken 
that form they stuff it with doctrine and bid men 
cling to the old shell and let the living spirit escape 
them. 



I THINK that it is the sense of right and wrong 
that marks the line between man and the brutes. 
I'm sure I've seen some dogs that had more 
sense of right and wrong than some men have ; 
and I think when you get down so low that this 
sense is wanting, you have come to beings that are 
neither human nor accountable, be their form what 
it may. But at least it is dark and twilight explor- 
ing in this direction. 



The ministry is inclined to think that a truth has 
no chance at all with refined and educated men, 
unless it have a refined dress. Now, although it is 
true that such men do look for what shall accord 
with their delicate and elevated tastes, and although 
even the truth of God is better if presented in chaste 
and elegant language, there are always, in every 
man's heart, great cords underlying all these 



182 LIVING WCriDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

lighter desires, which will answer instantly and 
powerfully to the touches o^ feeling — even though 
it be rudely expressed. When a man overflows, 
and in his efforts to express himself knocks his lan- 
guage in all directions, his honest, earnest, outright, 
downright feeling is the power which moves. It 
would be mightier w^ere it well expressed, but the 
feeling is the thing after all ; and when a man holds 
back feeling until it chokes in the sand, that he 
may present a correct and refined discourse, he 
hetrays Christ to rhetoric. 

When Paul said he was determined to know 
nothing but Christ and him crucified, he was upon 
this same theme. He was telling the people that 
he was not going to tickle their ears with fine, 
smooth periods. He said: " My power upon you 
shall not be in my refined and elegant language, in 
my persuasive eloquence. It will not be in me at 
ally but in my moving subject, Christ and him cru- 
cified. He was going to throw over them no lasso 
of ensnaring art; he would declare to them the 
plain truth in words that all could understand and 
feel. Paul meant no such thing as ministers mean 
aow-a-days, when they make this declaration. He 
iid not mean by it that he should shun all touchmg 
.ipon the things on which duty called him to speak 
out boldly, that he should meddle with nothing 
^hat could offend^ the sinning public, but talk per- 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 183 

petually of Christ and him crucified, without mak- 
ing this his lever to heave from their foundations 
the evils of the world. Such talk is nonsense, in 
the pulpit or out of it — consummate nonsense. . 



Sometimes we feel as if it were true that this 
world had broken forth from the womb of chance 
and were swinging in her dismal orbit, groaning, 
aifrighted and running away. 



Were one to ask me in which direction I think 
man strongest, I should say, in his capacity to hate. 



I THINK that Scripture passages are like wayside 
flowers. We have seen them all our lives, and 
therefore do not know or feel their beauty ; or they 
are like the beautiful creations of art that are in old 
cathedrals, covered by the dirt and moss of ages. 
Men go by them and do not know that they have 
passed forms that gave expression to the thoughts 
of ancient masters. No man cares for them, or 
cleans them, until by and by some enthusiastic 
Euskin comes along and does it, and then 'tis seen 
that the things which all their life long they have 
thought homely, are beautiful beyond description. 

What an idea of God's prodigality must have 



184 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

been in Paul's mi id when he thus struggled to 
express himself : " unto him who is able to do for 
you exceeding abundantly more than ye can ask or 
think." And this was his view of his master's 
character when he was in prison, and when, appa- 
rently, affairs with the church were desperate. 
This view he held up in the sky for Christians to 
steer by. Such abundance belonged to God, and 
God was theirs. Abundance is a relative word. 
A shepherd would not consider that abundance for 
him which might be so for a wayfarer. What 
would be abundance for a nomad would not do 
for the supply of the settled farmer, and the farm- 
er's abundance would be a scant portion for the 
merchant. A petty prince of a German province 
would require far more than the abundance of the 
merchant to support his state, yet what would make 
his coronet resplendent would be but a tr^^e in that 
of the Russian czar. When from these we look up 
to heaven, and try to imagine what that can be 
which Infinity names abundance — " more than ye 
can ask or think " — we are bewildered, and give 
up in despair. In the hours when the spirit 
wafts our souls upward as the wind sometimes lifts 
a bird, aiding its flight, we wish, and think, and 
ask such things, as afterwards we wonder how we 
dared to mention ; we cannot believe ourselves that 
we ever soared so high as we yet are conscious 



I 



LIVING WORDS FBOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 185 

of having done. When the heart yearns for our- 
selves, or for others, vre ask such blessings as we 
almost fear are presumptuous. But even a mother's 
heart, deep as the eternal wells, when in her closet 
she kneels amid the sound of groans, and the plash- 
ing of falling tears, to pray for her wandering child ; 
even the prayers of martyrs, in their utmost agony, 
when their words swept like the Amazon, and were 
yet but bubbles on the sea of feeling that was 
beneath, were shallow and poverty-struck compared 
to what he will give to each one who loves him. 
Why, look at the beginning ; when a child is sent 
to earth, what preparation of soft quilted fabric, of 
all delicate and curiously-wrought garments, scented 
with sweetest perfumes, is made for the little pil- 
grim of love ! But what is all this to the expense 
and lavish outfit of earth, the cradle of man's 
infancy ? See how its furniture is wrought. One 
fragrant bank, could he, in his whole lifetime, pro- 
duce such a one, would render an artist immortal. 

God has quilted the earth with Ibeauty, and 
combed the hair of ten million flowers and reeds 
over its verdant banks. No emperor's child was 
ever rocked in such a cradle. 

Does the mother lavish less love upon her child 
as it grows in stature and capacity? And shall God 
do less lovingly than those whose hearts he made 
and filled with love from his own heart ? 



186 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

Some men think of God as of one sitting like a 
thunderstorm in the sky. They know that there is 
no safety but in going to him, but they apprehend 
a great deal of danger even in that. 

They approach him under an umbrella of excuses, 
and have, here and there, a covert under which to 
dodge, if they think a bolt is coming. They forget 
who Christ meant by the " Father " of the prodigal 
Son ; and they lose all the encouragement that he 
meant for repentant sinners, when he represented 
God as in such a hurry to w^elcome him who had 
returned that he ran to meet him while he was yet 
a gveat way off^ and would not for kisses let him 
tell halfhh shame and sorrow. Some say 'tis dan- 
gerous to say too much of God's love. Men take 
advantage of it, and become universalists. They 
say : " Preach justice for bread ; let mercy be cake," 



The Bible is the centre jewel of which creation is 
the setting. 

Were the olBfice of deacon rotary in all churches, 
as it is in ours, we should not see. the absurd spec- 
tacle of deacons trying to turn away a minister 
because he had removed deacons who deserved 
removal — thus trying to make the higher office sub- 
servient to the lower. 



LIVINa WOKDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 187 

While I heartily despise the whole crew of reli- 
gionists — the scribes, pharisees, and learned dunces, 
of our Saviour's time, who saw the most wonderful 
things passing about them, and did not know it, I 
don't want to be caught playing the same fool's 
part, in respect to what God is working in our land 
and times. 

I want to praise God, and take part in helping it 
along. 



The most of everything is that which is unex- 
pressed. 

Words are but little bubbles thrown up to 
express what lies below, forever inexpressible. 



EccLEsiASTiciaM has always been the devil's cloak 
under which to work evil. 



The faults of those first Christians do me more 
good than their virtues do. If they had been exem- 
plary men we should have been apt to feel that as 
a matter of course God would take care of them, 
and hear their prayers, and we could take little 
encouragement from it; but we see that they were 
very much like ourselves, and that gives us cour- 
age. 



188 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

There is not a street in Brookljm where I could 
not point you out heroic women before whom tlie 
chronicled deeds of the historic dames of the 
ancient world would blush for very shame of their 
own insignificance. The world has advanced. 
Heroic deeds have become so common that they 
pass unnoticed. 



When you have repented of your wrong and 
turned from it — no matter with how little feeling, 
for who feels enough to forsake his sin feels suffi- 
ciently, and the man that is scourged like a hound 
by feeling is none the better for more than it took 
to turn him — you are not to trouble yourself about it 
any more. 

God forgets your sin when he forgives it. So 
may, so ought you. 

Great sinners who have offended against honesty 
and purity, when they are converted, sometimes try 
to keep their former sins up before them ; lest, una- 
ware, they who had been so awfully wicked, should 
forget it, and enjoy themselves. 

They check every pleasurable emotion by the 
reflection : " Ah ! think, think, what it was that you 
did. You are not worthy to laugh and be glad." 

True ; they are not worthy. Nor is any one, in 
and of himself; but I care not what their sins may 
have been, when they are forgiven of God, they 



LIVINa WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 189 

sb-*uld be cast into the depths of the sea, and 
reLaembered no more forever. 

The man that keeps tormenting himself by the 
memory of repented and forsaken sins, is a fool — a 
fool ! To repent and forsake sin is sufficient, when 
there is no way of making an atonement ; but if 
there is a way, the atonement must be made, or 
you may be sure that your repentance is a sham, 
and will never be accepted. 



Men confess everything but their own besetting 
sins. They steer quite clear of these. Who ever 
heard a man say : " O Lord ! I am as proud as 
Satan — humble me;" or, "O Lord! I am so mean 
and stingy, that 'tis only with great pain that I can 
unclose my fists. Make me generous." 



Suppose I were to set out on a pilgrimage to 
Jerusalem, and before I started were to go to 
Brown Brothers & Co., and obtain letters of credit 
for the cities of London, Jericho, etc. Then, with 
these papers which a child might destroy, which 
would be but ashes in the teeth of flame, which a 
thousand chances might take from me, I should go 
on with confidence and cheer, saying to myself, 
" As soon as I come to London I shall be in funds. 



190 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

I have a letter in mj pocket from Brown Brothers 
& Co., wliicli will give me five hundred dollars 
there ; and in the other cities to which I am bound 
I shall find similar supplies, all at my command, 
through the agency of these magic papers and pen 
strokes of these enterprising men." But, suppose 
that instead of this confidence I were to sit down on 
shipboard, and go to tormenting myself in this 
fashion : " Now, what am I to do when I get to 
London ? I have no money, and how do I Tcnow 
that these bits of paper which I have with me mean 
anything, or will amount to anything? What shall 
I do ? I am afraid I shall starve in the strange 
city to which I am going." I should be a fool, you 
say ; but should I be half the fool that that man is 
w^ho, bearing the letters of credit of the Eternal 
God, yet goes fearing all his way, cast down and 
doubting whether he shall ever get safe through his 
journey? No fire, no violence, nor any chance, 
can destroy the checks of the Lord. When he says : 
" I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee," and 
" my grace shall be suflicient for thee," believe it ; 
and no longer dishonor your God by withholding 
from him the confidence which you freely accord to 
Brown Brothers & Co. 



LIVING WOEDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 191 

The years! how they have passed. They are 
gone as clouds go, on a summer day. They came, 
they grew, they rolled full-orbed ; they waned, they 
died, and their story is told. 

Years that wrought upon us, in thought and deed, 
with the force and power of eternity ; years, whose 
marks we shall carry forever, were dissolved like 
the dew, and their work is finished. 

And the days have gone. "With a gentle swell 
comes their knell backward to us, over the ocean. 
Slipped from their cables, the bright days glide one 
by one away from us, drifting with airy speed over 
the shoreless tide, beating faint, sweet measures as 
they recede from our longing view. We may stand 
long upon the shore, and call them ; but they will 
not return ; they are ours no more. 

Awful is the dirge of years. It is an anthem 
too solemn and grand for tears ; but we may weep 
for the dying days. Faintly they sigh to us of 
by-gone hours, of moments fragrant wifh all human 
joys, of friends and familiars, whose smiles at morn- 
ing cheered our way, but whose faces at evening 
were covered ; for still as life lengthens the shadows 
fall, and the jpast is forever gathering treasures. 

The hopes that are born, that grow ripe and die, 
float out, as the days, on the ebbing tide. 

Gorgeous and rich are the shrines in many 
lands, but what temple was ever builded as some 



192 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT 

days are. Marvellous fancies, deeds, in whose do- 
ing the heart grows strong, thoughts too mighty for 
words, feelings that are deeper than the utmosf; 
depths of thought; these are the material out of 
which days are built, and no Vatican or cathedral 
walls ever blazed with such glories of picture as are 
often painted on single days. 

As they move softly towards the far horizon, how 
do our hearts follow, with yearning love, the mo- 
tions of the parting days ! We would hold them 
back, but we cannot, and in the golden sunset the 
bright days sink. And with them how many that 
we loved depart. Loved ! nay, love^ for the love 
remains to shine on the memory of those who have 
left us, like the lamps that are kept burning in 
sepulchres. 

Two weeks ago I told you that three thousand 
dollars had got to be raised to pay for the repairs 
of this hous^. 

The plates were sent round, and about six hun- 
dred dollars were raised. 

1 was heartily ashamed, and have not got ovei 
it yet. Last week the trustees came, and asked me 
if I would name the matter again, and I said: 
" No, I will notP But this week, upon their re- 
newed application, I have consented to speak once 
more. If this don't do, you may pay your debt 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 193 

how you can; for I will never mention it again. 
I'm not going to be a pump to be thrust into men's 
pockets to force up what ought to come up freelj. 

When the surgeon comes to a place where he 
must cut, he had better cut. For more than a year 
I've seen that our plate-collections grew meaner 
and meaner. I didn't want to face you with such 
things as I've got to say to-day, and I put it off as 
long as I could. Now I shall speak plainly once 
for all, not having the face to bring the matter up 
again. This debt has got to be paid, and will you 
meet it honorably, and pay it like men, or will you 
let it drip, drip, drip out of you reluctantly, a few 
dollars at a time ? You can take your choice. I'm 
not going to try to drill money out of you as I would 
drill stones. Our lecture-room holds about three 
hundred people, and we collect from thirty to eighty 
dollars there every time we pass the plate. Our 
best Christians attend the weekly meetings, and 
they are always the most generous. In this con- 
gregation, that numbers over three thousand, we 
don't average one cent per head in our collections. 

"While there are, thank God, many of his poor 
among us, who cannot give him a shilling without 
making a difference in all their arrangements for a 
whole week, there are hundreds of men here who 
ought to be ashamed ever to give anything but 
gold, or, at least a bill. And they are ashamed to 

9 



194 LIVING WOKDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

do it. Don't they, when the plate approaches, and 
they have put their fingers in their pockets and 
selected a quarter — the smoothest one that they can 
find — use admirable tact and skill in conveying it 
to the plate, so that no one shall see what they give? 
Pious souls! they don't allow their left hand to 
know what their right hand doeth. If they have 
two bills, one good, one broken, they'll generally 
give the broken one to the Lord. The amount of 
meanness among respectable people is appalling. 
One needs to take a solar microscope in order to 
see some men. I'm willing to give my share, to do 
whatever tlie trustees desire ; I shall say no more. 



I WOULD not, for the world, bring up a child to 
have that horror of death which hung over my own 
childhood. 

I think I never came nearer swooning than when 
I heard of the death of one of my young com- 
panions. I walked in a shadow for two days, 
hardly able to tell whether I was in the body or 
out of it. 

The thought of death was to me awful beyond 
description. The toll of the funeral bell would 
cheat me out of my most desired meal. To my 
imagination its stroke was thus : " Death ! hell ! 
damnation !" Our children should be taught that 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 195 

a funeral is the nearest place to heaven ; instead of 
which, I think, they oftener feel it to be the nearest 
place there is on earth to hell. 

I do not say what death should be to the impeni« 
tent — it is a pass at which no mistake can be recti- 
fied — let all beware how they come up to it ; but 
I say this, that to the Christian, and to the little 
child, it is the best and most joyful thing that life 
leads to — the portal into everlasting blessedness; 
and thus it should always be represented. 

Tell your child when, after long imprisonment 
in school, he one day hears his father at the gate, 
come to take him home, and while his young heart 
shakes his whole frame in nervous ecstasy, that this 
is like what dying is, but not half as much, or half 
as joyful. Death is vacation. God comes to take 
us from this old, rolling academy, a good school, 
but a hard one, and bear us home with him. Then, 
should the house be draped with signs of woe, as if 
it were plague-smitten ? 



Young men, you come here to get good advice ; 
now hear ic. I tell you there is nothing in the 
world so profitable as are lying and stealing — I 
should not like to drop down now, before I finished 
this sentence — so profitable in the beginning, but 
so sure to be hit by God's lightning at the end. 



196 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

You can gain fast, but you will lose fearfully and 
rapidly. 

When suspicion begins to touch you the end is 
near. 

And when- that time comes, if the rocks would 
fall from their everlasting beds and crush you and 
hide you, it would be unutterable mercy, compared 
with the burden of shame and contempt that you 
must bear. 

My heart is towards the young yet. Only when I 
look in the glass and see how the grey hairs are com- 
ing on my head, do I know that I am growing old. 
By the beating of my heart I should never know it. 
My heart is towards the young yet. "Would that I 
could w2iYii them so that they would heed ; but they 
hear me, and they will go away and remember 
naught. They will follow their footateps who are 
as sure to topple and go down to ruin as the sun is 
to rise and shine. 

There are men in both these cities, whose names 
I could call, on whom the eyes of those just enter- 
ing the work of life are fixed for imitation, but 
whose end is damnation. 

See how it is with many corrupt public men. 
One lately died in New England. Tliey prosper 
for a time. Then sink into obscurity, and after a 
while there is a little paragraph in the paper — 
" Such a one is deady That is all that men see. 



LIVING WORDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 197 

But could they look into the man, and see his men- 
tal history for his last few years ; coald they see 
the disappointed hopes, the defeated plans, the cha- 
grins, the mortifications ; see all the vermin that 
haunted the secret chambers of that abused house ; 
the evil thoughts, the wicked wishes that ran in and 
out, like rats and reptiles in old, dilapidated and 
gipsy-haunted fortresses, see the man stranded, 
high and dry, dropping, dropping, dropping ; until 
at last the rotten thing sunk entirely and fell into 
utter corruption, and the papers said, " He is dead," 
they would not be so eager so follow his steps, nor • 
to dare his end. A snake can lap itself around till 
it inserts its tail into its mouth ; if I had power to 
ring life thus, and make its ends meet, I could save 
many ; but the sweet comes first, and men will not 
believe in the bitter until it is tfh late. 

The lad tries being industrious for a week, and 
because he don't see immediate good results he 
gives up the effort. He tries dishonesty, and the 
gain is in his hands at once ; so he calls evil, good ; 
forgetting that evil is always ready grown, and 
yields its pleasant fruit at once. That's the best he 
will ever have from it ; afterwards it grows worse 
and worse continually. 

Good is ungrown and imperfect in this life, and 
often its fruit is very long in ripening. Evil is the 
plump, round egg ; Good, the callow and unfledged 



198 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

bird, unshapely, helpless, and that cannot even 
peep with any strength. 

But by and by the true nature of each will ap- 
pear. Suppose a man were to go out and sow rad- 
ish seed and acorns at the same time. In a few 
weeks he goes to see how they do. 

" Oh!" he says, "radishes are a great deal better 
for timber than oak is. Here I sowed my seed a 
month or more ago, and the acorns haven't even 
sprouted, while the radishes are as big as my wrist." 

You plant your evil, and it springs up like rad- 
ishes, when your good has not even sprouted. A 
man says, "I told the truth all last week, even 
many times to my own hurt, and I got into a great 
deal of trouble by it. This week I've told lies all 
the week, and I can see that there has been much 
advantage to me in^it." I^obody thinks indiscrimi- 
nate lying would be good, but each man thinks 
that if everybody else would speak truth, he should, 
then, be a great gainer by lying. 

Often it does look to us as it looked to the psalm- 
ist himself, that the way to be prosperous and 
happy is to be bad, and the way to be miserable is 
to be good. But the truth is not so. 



God works upon man by means of all events, all 
natural influences. The mere naturalist goes abroad 



LIVING WORDS FROM ILYMOUTH PULPIT. 199 

and says, "Don't tell me that I'm what God makes 
me. I'm what my parents make me, what natural 
law makes me, what social influences make me. 
I'm the child of ten thousand different influences." 
The pious dreamer says, " I am fashioned by God ;" 
he jumps all intervening causes, as entirely unwor- 
thv of notice. As usual, extremes meet in a com- 
mon blunder. God does not work directly on man, 
save in exceptional cases. Where a man was born 
and how he is mirtured and taught, make him ; but 
all the influences that play upon him are ordained 
of God. Man is as an instrument of music whose 
key board is so broad that a hundred hands may 
play upon it, and each player execute different 
times. Many and diverse influences operate at 
once upon the mind of man, and although the direc- 
tion in which he was set at his birth will have 
something, perhaps much, to do with what he be- 
comes, his native tendencies will be modified by 
ten thousand circumstances. The natural things 
which touch the man are all under the control of 
the Supernal Power. 



Children think much more and much more 
deeply than we are aware, upon religious subjects. 

I remember that I was seriously exercised upon 
the doctrines of election, free-agency, etc., by the 
time that I was eight years old. I was brought up 



200 LIVING WORl!>S FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

on doctrine. The things that most influence child- 
ren are acted things ; not things that are said. 

I don't remember to have been affected by any 
sermon until I was more than thirteen years old. 
But the prayer and talking meetings were the ones. 
I used to be convicted there ; and I would go about 
trying to be " pricked in the heart." I had got 
that figure and so tried to prick myself. I wanted 
to be t^ken up by some resistless wind of convic- 
tion, and to be made to suffer such agonies about 
my sinful state as I had heard others teli of; for I 
thought that right after that would follow conver- 
sion, and I should be safe. 

I don't think fear has much really good influence 
upon children — a powerful influence it certainly 
does have. I remember once we children were all 
called together into our kitchen — which we thought 
the best room in the house ; its windows looked out 
upon trees and flowers, and its door, when opened, 
revealed the long line of road along which we 
always made haste to run as soon as we could gain 
our freedom. We were called into the kitchen to 
be talked to by a minister who was staymg at my 
father's. He told us how ^^'^ked boys and girls 
were by nature, and what an awful end was before 
them if they never repented. He told us the story 
of one wicked boy who saw the devil coming after 
him. The idea almost froze our young blood with 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 201 

horror, and we resolved with all onr raight to be 
good, that such a fate might not befall us. But as 
for myself I don't think that talk ever did me one 
particle of good ; on the contrary, I believe I never 
did cut up so bad any one week as I did that week, 
spite of all my efforts to stop myself by thouglits 
of that dreadful story, and of how I should feel to 
see the devil coming up the road after me, 

I remember that one Sunday morning, as soon as 
I awoke, I began to play, pickings the cotton out of 
the quilt, and rolling it into balls to throw at my 
brother. Suddenly came the thought " You wicked 
boy ! to begin the Sabbath by playing." 

At once I was condemned, and ducked beneath 
the bed-clothes lest something dreadful should catch 
me. There I lay quietly five minutes, as long as I 
ever kept still. 

There came a woman to live with us — Aunty 
Chandler we were taught to call her ; she became 
my fast friend, and used to beg me off from wh\p- 
pings. There was a tree whose apples used to get 
me up and out early in the morning. I was often 
whipped for stealing them ; but whippings used to 
make me very brave. One morning, just as I was 
stealing out to go for the apples. Aunty Chandler 
stopped me : " Oh ! Henry," she said, tears rolling 
down her face, "I cannot bear to have you 
whipped so; why will you go and get those apples?" 

9* 



202 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

This was a new idea. It had never struck me 
that Aunty C. got the whippings on her heart. 
After that there were not ropes enough in old Con- 
necticut to draw my young feet to that tree. 

In those days people used to get together and 
pray and make a solemn time of it when a train of 
emigrants were about to start for Ohio. It was 
almost as if they were to start for another world. 
Well do I remember the long lines of white-covered 
wagons that usedrfo wind through Litchfield, and I 
used to run into the house and hide under the table 
that they might not steal and carry me off. Well, 
the time came when Aunty Chandler went away in 
one of those slow-moving trains. I shall never for- 
get it. I thought I was near the end of Tny gospel 
when she went. Her life was strong in its good 
influence upon me. Next came a negro servant. 
He was my next evangelist. I used to watch him 
in the field, and in the house, and even now, with 
my mature reflection, I cannot remember ever to 
have seen him do a wrong act. As I worked be- 
side him in the field, he used to tell me his expe- 
rience, and where he learned this and that hymn ; 
and then he would sing as only the African can 
sing, and I used to wish that I could have such 
religion as that negro enjoyed. When we went to 
bed — he and I slept in the same garret, he in one 
corner and I in the other ; some people would think 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 203 

it a dreadful thing to have to share a garret with a 
negro — when we went to bed he used to pile his 
pillows up behind him so that he could lie sitting 
up^ take his hymn-book, fasten his candle up some- 
where so that he could see, and commence having 
a regular good time. He would sing hymn after 
hymn with such relish and enjoyment, the big 
tears frequently rolling down his dark face, that 1 
used to be cut to the heart with remorse, thdt I, a 
minister's son, brought up with every advantage, 
should be so much worse than a poor negro. I 
would lie there and pretend to be asleep, while all 
the time was singing right at my con- 
science, and I was crying heartily to hear him. 
Oh! how glad I should have been could I have 
changed places with that poor negro serVing- 
man, if it hadn't been for cheating him. I think 
that livedo acted out religion does more good to 
children than all the talking that can be done, 
though talking certainly should not be omitted. 
That African did me more good than all the minis- 
ters that ever came to my father's house. 



The infidelity of the last twenty-five years has 
been that which has sought to emasculate religion, 
by separating it from practical life, and lifting it so 
far above everybody's daily and familiar use, that 
they might as well be without it. The pretence is, 



204 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

that religion is too sacred to be rendered useful in 
common matters. Over the church doors men 
write: " Eeligion is religion;" and over the store 
door: "Business is business." And the church S2ijs 
to business : " Don't you come in here ;" and the 
store says to religion : " Don't you come in Jiere?'^ 

Man rejects the interference of the higher law in 
his business as an impertinence. But when Sunday 
comes, he says : " We've had enough of business 
all the week ; now let us have the blessed Gospel." 

And the minister must confine himself to 
" Christ and him crucified." He mustn't mention 
love to God and man shown in business transac- 
tions, for he must preach the Gospel ; he mustn't 
exhort to temperance, for he must preach the 
Gospel; he mustn't preach of justice, purity, and 
humanity, for he must preach the GosjpeL 

Why, if men catch "the higher law" on 'change, 
or in the street, they hoot at it, they chase it, they 
hit it, and drive it from among them, crying out : 
" Here is this higher law escaped out of the 
church, and out of the Sunday." 



The worst spectacle which this country now 
presents is not, I think, the governmental or politi- 
cal corruptions, though these are enormous ; but it 
is th^t of a religious body, like the one in New 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 205 

fork, utterly refusing to open its mouth against 
the blackest iniquity of the age. 

And for what, in the name of Heaven? What 
reason do they give for their strange silence? 
Why, because if it does speak against this sin it 
will not be allowed to preach the Gospel. If every 
sin were as powerful as is the sin of slavery, what 
would these preachers of the Gospel do ? Keep 
silence in regard to them all, of course ; for, accord- 
ing to their vie^s, only the smaller and least pow- 
erful sins can be safely hit. 

That ponderous body can bombard men bravely 
for using tobacco, but it can't say one word against 
selling men and women to raise it. It can spend 
itself and exert its tremendous machinery against 
the awful sin of the dancing of young men and 
maidens; but can't utter a sound when maidens 
are sold to prostitution, and young men are driven 
off, in chain-gangs, to the rice swamps of Georgia. 

The use which I make of such men, is to point 
the young to them, and say: "There are men 
whom you must shun to resemble." 

The worst stamp of Phariseeism was not .in our 
Saviour's day. It has, after years of monstrous 
growth, exhibited itself in the nineteenth century. 



The Bible sets us an example of fashioning 
for ourselves a personal God to suit our need 



206 LIVING W< tD9 FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

When I find Paul using figures to represent to 
himself God, as his wants required him, I know 
that I may do the same thing. When I want love, 
I may make God my tender and loving father, or 
sister, or mother. When I want pity, I may make 
him a being of unfailing and boundless pity. 
When I want courage, he is my lion; when I 
want light and cheer, he is my bright and morning 
star — my God alert, my sun, my bread, my wine. 
We may imagine him everything that is to us good 
and beautiful, tender and true, and know that we 
are not cheating ourselves by vain fancies, but have 
only touched the extreme outer edge of the. ever 
blessed reality. There may be dangers in this 
freedom and variety of our representation of our 
God; but there are dangers in all forms of our 
thought of him, and in none half so much as in 
having no realization of him at all, in considering 
him as an abstraction of all the omnis. Thinking 
of him thus, none can ever love him^ or walk with 
hv/n. 

This everlasting twaddle of infidelity about fixed 
natural laws, is simple foolishness. 

I should like to know, now, if Tnan even has not 
as much power over natural laws, wherever they 
touch him, as natural laws have over him. True, 
God says to man, in one place, " Obey ;" but in 
other places, he says : " Command 1" 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 207 

Nature can work roughly and coarsely in gene- 
ralities; but she needs men's intellect and will to 
give effect to what she does. 

Through hundreds and thousands of years she 
tried her hand at making apples, and they were 
but crab-apples at last. 

Man said, " I will help you ; and by his industry 
ind wisdom, the sour, miserable fruit soon covered 
all the hills with luscious apples. 

I have power over nature's laws to make them 
•^•eork for my own and my children's good. I can 
make the lightning my amanuensis and my messen- 
ger. I can make the sun himself my artist ; but 
when did ever the unassisted sun paint a picture? 
Man whispers to him : '' Come down here, and I 
will tell thee something that thou knowest not," 
and the sun obeys. "Go through there," says man, 
and the sun goes through, and finds himself paint- 
ing pictures. I should like to see him try to do that 
alone. I can say to the sea, " Wait on my will," 
and it obeys me; to the stream : "Thou lazy thing, 
flow no longer down hill, but up," and it flows up. 
When I turn it into a machine, I say to the water, 
" Grind," and it grinds my food. Natural laws are 
God's horses, and he says to man : " Yault," and he 
who can ride them is their master. By working 
them according to their nature, we can make them 
to do a million things that they could never dc 



Sf08 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

without US. By obeying, we command. They are 
the blind giants which our will and wisdom guide. 
Is not this true? Have I perplexed you with meta- 
physics ? Have I not rather showed you plain 
facts, which you* can follow out to almost any 
extent ? 

Remember, the question between me and the 
infidel naturalist is not, " Does God disturb natural 
laws in order to answer the prayers of his people, 
or does he do violence to nature that he may do 
any man good ?" but it is this : " Is it, or is it not^ 
likely that he is able to do for those who call upon 
him and whom he loves as well as man can do by 
means of natural law for those dear to himV^ In 
other words, " Is it likely that one who has given 
to his creatures such wonderful power over laws of 
his own creating, should be himself so bound and 
hampered by them that there should be with him 
no possibility of any modification of their working 
to suit circumstances? The idea is absurd, and 
they are fools who indulge it. That man who says 
and believes that there is no effect on God's feel- 
ings and actions by prayer, is not a Christian. I'd 
rather a man would do as Martin Luther did — ^lay 
down his hand on a promise and say to God, 
" Now, here is thy word, O ! Lord ! fulfill it to me, 
or I never will believe thee again, as long as I 
live." God will interfere *and help us, no matter 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 209 

what laws we have broken. If we didn't break 
laws we shouldn't need his help ; because we have 
broken, and do break them, he does help all who 
trust in him and even most of those that don't. 
When it is proved that praying alters nothing, I 
will say of the Bible, " It was a pleasant book ; but 
it has passed." 

Not all prayers are answered. When you ask 
for what would take away motive for exertion ; 
when you ask for what you do not really need, or 
for what would hurt you, you will not, probably, 
get what you desire. 

But when a man, out of his deep want, goes to 
God for a good gift which he is powerless to gain 
for himself, he shall have it. This is the seal. 
God is more willing to give good gifts unto them 
that ask him, than parents are to give good gifts 
unto their children. Do you believe that ? 



I DO not fear science ; I love it. I do not look 
with jealous eye upon it lest it cut off some of my 
ground. I accept all truth, when it is proved, no 
matter where it carries me; but I don't accept 
what every man calls truth, any more than I be- 
lieve the tale of every beggar that comes to my 
door. 

Infidels are working for God, though they do not 



210 LIVING W0KD3FK0M PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

know it. They shake and rend his truths until 
they think that they have destroyed them, but 
they have only cleared them of the shuck. 1 
think infidels are like swine that, going into a corn- 
field tear down the mighty grass, and crunch its 
leaves ar.d ears, trampling into the earth all that 
they cannot eat. Then, they go out thinking that 
they have devoured or buried all the corn. Yes, 
they have buried it for resurrection ; for from its 
grave it shall rise in tenfold glory, to wave all the 
more luxuriantly for that husbandry of hoof and 
snout. So is it with infidel swine in the corn- 
field of God's Word. 



WnoEVER has been enabled to take hold upon 
another's interest in such a manner as to give hirri' 
selfy for the time being, for that other, and to feel 
that his friend's life is dearer than his own, has at- 
tained to one of the purest and highest states into 
which man on earth ever cpmes. And he should 
understand that a very high experience has been 
granted him. 

To be lifted above temptations ; never to have a 
wrong thought, or a wrong moving of the afiections, 
is a very good thing, but it is not being so Christ- 
like as ho is who bears upon his soul another's 
life — who suffers for him, yearns for him, would 
give his life to do him good. This is the very 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 211 

spirit of Christ Jesus, and if we sufer with him we 
shall also reign with him. And we must ^mEqt 
with him, if we would reign with him. But now, 
the other truth which meets this. We have no 
business to be so linked with any other human 
being as that their destination shall be ours. All 
suffering more than that which makes us readj to 
do all in our power for their good, we must fight 
against. It can do only harm. We must have our 
best and dearest friends to know that our peace in 
God cannot be destroyed. Not husband nor wife, 
brother nor sister, nor friends have any right to cause 
rust and canker to enter our souls for them. Who 
shall separate us from the love of God ? We must 
do all we can, and do it in a cheerful, winning 
waj^, so as not to repel and torment them, thus hin- 
dering the very thing we would hasten. But when 
we have done all we must wait God's time. This 
is what all those injunctions to patience mean. 
But there is another thought, " What if our friends 
should die ?" You have no right to meddle with 
that, nor to try to settle the state of any one who 
does die. And, beside, do you not know that this 
necessity of seeing men go unprepared to death, 
was what the apostles, the prophets, yes, and 
Christ himself was obliged to look upon and bear? 
But remember, God's pity is for the time of trouble 
and distress. He is your tower — run into it, and 



212 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

be safe. I would not give iwo cents for a faith 
that wouldn't help me while I need help. Christ 
has offered to bear my burdens, and he shall have 
them. Here are my trials, temptations, and woes, 
not in heaven, and here is where I have most need 
of my Saviour. 

No man is born into the full Christian charac- 
ter, any more than he is born into the character 
of a man when he comes into the world. A man 
at conversion is in the state of one who has just 
come into possession of an old homestead. He has 
the title and he can make for himself a beautiful 
home. But the dust, the dirt, and the cobwebs 
of years choke all the rooms, and must be cleared 
away. Many sills and beams are rotten and must 
be replaced by new ones. Chambers must be re- 
fitted, walls newly plastered, the whole roof must 
be searched over, and every leak stopped. There 
must be a thorough cleansing and repair before the 
mansion is habitable ;. and when all this is done 
'tis only an empty house that the man has. 

The same kind of thing that a man is, who has 
trained himself into freedom from wrong, without 
having become faithful in right deeds. 

Now for a man's house he may buy carpets ready 
made ; but there is no loom that will weave car- 
pets for his heart, except the loom that is in him- 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 213 

self. Furniture, beds, chairs, and tables, he may 
buy for his house, but rest and peace for his soul 
can only be worked out within his soul, and long 
labor it often proves. He may purchase paintings, 
whose voiceless language shall make eloquent his 
walls, and statues to grace niche and pedestal, and 
books to fill his many shelves, but the painter, the 
sculptor and the publisher for the man's mental 
house are all in his own heart. 



We are all painting pictures in the dark. Oh I 
this painting in the dark ! what is to be revealed 
when the light cometh ? It is fearful. 



I THINK that persons who are sincerely resolved 
to fashion themselves upon the pattern of Christ, 
but who can see no marks upon, or in themselves 
of their own success, are like artists painting in the 
dark, beautiful pictures which shall astonish them 
with their loveliness when the morning shines upon 
their work. Or, they are like flowers, talking to- 
gether in the night, and saying: "We are not 
beautiful as we desire to be." They wished to be 
arrayed in gay colors, and to have jewels of dew 
upon their buds and leaves ; but they answer 
mournfully to each other's questionings : " It is all 



214 LIVING WORDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT 

darkness upon yon ; nothing can be seen." Then 
they hold up their heads, and stretch out their 
leaves; but a weight oppresses them, and again 
they droop, complaining that no brightness or 
beauty is given them. But all the while the night 
is distilling its gentle moisture on those uncon- 
scious flowers, and the very jewels for which they 
murmur and sigh, are gathering thickly on every 
leaf and stem. They are bathed in the dew of 
freshness and fragrance, and crowned with the 
most radiant gems. And by and by, the morn- 
ing breaks, and the moment that the glorious sun 
rolls above the horizon, and floods, with his slant 
beams, the world, ten million flowers glisten and 
glow with jewels of such lustre as was never known 
in diamond from Golconda's mines, nor in any pre- 
cious stone on monarch's brow. 



Periodical excitements are normal to the hu- 
man constitution. Our very life stands on this 
foundation. Sixteen hours' excitement and eight 
hours' stupor — sleep. 

There is in the human soul " a common feeling," 
which, being roused and stimulated, renders it pos- 
sible for men to do in one hour the ordinary work 
of ten. It is somewhere said, '^ God never works 
by periodical fits." But I can hardly think of an 
instance in which he works otherwise. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 215 

A man has a right to stimulate himself, for right 
purposes, in his lower, intermediate, and higher 
nature. It is needful that he should do so. All men 
recognize this need in regard to business, politics, 
social life — but if needful here, where the senses 
and even selfishness have much influence, how 
much more needful when we rise into the realm of 
moral and spiritual things ! Revivals of religion 
are in strict accordance with natural law. They 
are not to supersede the regular, calm, organized 
action of the church, but to work with all this, as 
an occasional, especial power. Men are energized 
by the Holy Spirit, and made able to work rapidly. 
But when the excitement is worn out, let it go. 
Don't try to keep it up unnaturally, or by effort. 
All strong feeling must rest quick. 

To men who object to this intensifying a woi% 
or to repenting in a hurry and under excitement, it 
may be said, *' See to it, then, that you take the first 
calm moments when the reaction arrives to become 
a Christian, or you will prove that these objections 
of yours are all mere excuses to escape conver- 
sion." 

When men have a great stone to move, they first 
dig away all the earth around it, working moder- 
ately and taking care to reserve their strength. 
.When the earth is removed, they apply their lever, 
and now all take hold. At the wol-d, "Now 



216 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

heave, men, heave !" each man strains with nerve 
and sinew — he throws his whole strength into that 
moment's effort, and the stone is forced from its 
bed. 

Now what if some man, just as the final effort 
were about to be made were to cry out, " Stop, men, 
stop! Have you reflected well on what you are 
about to do ? Have you thought whether you will 
be able to keep on working all day at the rate you 
will work while upheaving that stone ?" 

What better than this is he who objects to being 
lifted up upon the spring tide of a revival, because 
he is afraid he cannot always afterwards live up to 
that mark. 

He is not required to live so. It is not possible. 
His feelings should always be deep like the sea ; 
Hut they should not always roll and swell like the 
sea's agitated waves. 

There are seasons in which the social and the 
moral feelings should thus move and mount, and at 
such times becoming a Christian is much easier 
work than at others ; and although there are many 
very good Christians born when all is calm, and 
there is no religious excitement about them, yet 1 
like a revival-born Christian best; for he is apt to 
he more open-hearted and of more use. 

Some say revivals cause a great deal of self- 
deception— quick conversions are not apt to be 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 217 

thorough. This might be a sensible remark among 
lieathens who do not know the first principles oi 
the Gospel ; but in communities like ours, where 
from the very cradle men are taught all the head 
knowledge that they need, and where the question 
is simply one of the will, " Will you submit to 
the rule of Christ, renouncing the ways of wicked- 
ness, or will you not ?" it's a mere quibble of unbe- 
lief. The New Testament pauses not a moment 
over such miserable arguments. " Repent and be- 
lieve now^'^ is its doctrine, and three thousand souls 
were added to the church in one day. The Lord 
recognized the fact that many tares would be 
gathered in with the wheat ; but he never, on that 
account, sanctioned people to wait to le soundly 
converted. " Let both grow together till the har- 
vest," is his command. ' 

This doctrine of delay, of shunning excitement 
upon a subject which ought always to excite men 
more than anything else can, and which ought to 
cause them to be in the greatest possible haste, is a 
delusion and trap of the devil, in which he has 
caught thousands of souls. 



Struggling and distressed Christian, when we 
meet in heaven where will be that heart-break that 
you told me of ? 

10 



218 LIYIN& WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

Will you not look me in the eyes and laugh to 
think you told me that your heart was breaking ? 



From my window I saw, after the last dreadful 
storm, a ship struggling into port. Her sides were 
all chafed and scarified, as if she had been beset 
by the robber waves and forced to battle for her 
life. Her mast was broken, her sails draggled and 
torn. Her spars and yards were gone, and she 
looked almost a wreck. 

Out on the sea the waves had risen against her, 
and all the thievish winds had sought to do her 
harm. A desperate time she had indeed of it, 
but she had made her port ; and now, as she 
dropped her anchor and lay securely in her moor- 
ings, her hull sound, her cargo all safe, her crew 
alive and well, what to her was it that she had 
been obliged to fight her way, or that out at sea 
the waves and winds were even yet raging and 
mad with storms ? She had gained her harbor ; 
she had made a prosperous voyage. The end 
for which she was sent forth she had accomplished 
— ^not the less nobly that through storm and tem- 
pest she had held upon her way. 

But what was it to the ship John Milton, when 
she was floating, piece by piece, upon the waves — 
when hei cargo was all sunken, and her crew all 



LIVING WORDS FEOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT, 219 

drowned and lying on the beach, or in the sea— 
that all the first part of her voyage had been plea- 
sant, that all the middle of it had been over smooth 
and sunny seas, that she had passed in safety all the 
islands, and sailed prosperously over the equator ? 
Her voyage was a failure, for she i>ever entered 
port. The end — the end stamps a career as success- 
ful or disastrous ; and the John Milton did not 
answer the end for which she was sent forth. 

Men are as ships sent forth upon the sea, ^nd 
that man who gains the port of heaven, though he 
be more battered and bruised than any ship that 
ever sailed up yonder river to its anchorage, he 
is the successful man ; but he who founders on the 
beach, no matter how close it be to the open gates 
of heaven, has made a bad voyage, though his log- 
book may tell of sunshine and fair winds all the way 
to the shoal whereon he struck and found destruction. 



God's glory is his goodness. This, by his own 



showing. 



The ship of morality draws too much water ever 
to ride into the harbor of salvation. No one ever 
was or ever will be able to enter with her. Her 
Keel always reaches too far down. A lighter craft 
must be obtained, or you will be forever outside of 



S20 Liviisra words from Plymouth pulpit. 

In man's natural state, he inhabits only the 
ground floor of his soul's dwelling — the apartments 
which look out upon the back yard, where is accu- 
mulated all the filth and garbage of the household. 
The upper apartments are all fastened up and 
injured from disuse. 

When a man has deliberately and understand- 
ingly resolved to turn from all his evil ways and 
devote himself heart and soul to the service of 
God, he is converted. There has been too much 
fog and darkness thrown about this simple matter 
of conversion. The whole difference in the state 
of a justified man and a man under condemnation 
is, that one uses himself first for God and his fellow 
creatures, and the other uses himself first for him- 
self^ and second only (if at all) for God and his 
fellows. There are multitudes of men who would 
like to be Christians, if they only knew how ; but 
they are waiting to be struck by some mysterious 
and romantic flash, which will never come. If 
they feel like praising and loving now, let them do 
it ; there is no danger of its being wrong. Many 
wish to be able to hegin their Christian course with 
joy and triumph. Let them begin, even if it be 
in darkness and doubt. The joy and triumph will 
await them at the other end. 

If I had only had somebody to tell me the things 
that I now tell you^ how much trouble I should 



LIVING WOEDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 221 

have escaped ! 1 used to sing hymns from the out- 
side, just as hungry boys, who have no pennies, 
look in at bake-shops, through the windows. 

''Ah !" I used to think, smelling the hymns, ''I, 
too, could enjoy them, just as all these Christians 
do ; but they are not for me. I am not a Christ- 
ian." Now, I say, if there is any one in this lec- 
ture-room, who is holding his heart back from 
feelings, that he thinks should belong only to Christ- 
ians, unhand yourselves ; give your heart its will ; 
let it rise, exult, love and praise. God is working 
in you. To check these feelings, or to hide them, 
is to smother the Holy Spirit. There is no reason 
why any soul before me this hour should not resolve 
to take Jesus Christ for his Lord and love, and rise 
up from his seat a converted man. There is no need 
to go days and weeks under conviction of sin. It 
is no credit to a man to have a terrible time being 
converted. It is a mean business. Suppose that 
I had lied to my partner in business. Suppose he 
were to charge it upon me, and I were to try to 
evade the matter, and were to oblige him to chase 
me through a whole week, crowding me here, pok- 
ing me there, and pressing me in every possible way 
to own my fault ; until at last he cornered me so 
closely, that seeing escape to be impossible, I gave in, 
and said, " Well, I Tiave lied, and I am sorry ;" just 
because I could not help yielding. How mean a 



222 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

spirit should I thus show. How much better, if 
upon sudden press of temptation I had sinned, for 
me to stop at once when the lie was charged upon 
me, and say honestly, bhishing crimson with shame, 
'^Tes, yes, I am wrong, all wrong. I am sorry, 
md will do so no more." 

Why will not men, when they see their guilt and 
langer, face right about and make short work with 
themselves ? « 



Mirth is the sweet wine of human life. It should 
be offered sparkling with zestful life unto God. He 
desires no emasculated or murdered offerings. 



That which is wickedness jper se in man would 
be infinitely worse in God. 



Christians all ought to reflect the character of 
Christ. But the young Christian says : "It cannot 
be that the Spirit of God is really in me, or I 
should be Biore like brother so and so. He, now, 
seems a good deal like Christ, but who ever would 
guess what Ciirbt was like, if he judged by me ? I 
wish my experiences were like that good brother's." 
Now suppose the flo'>->'jrs in a garden were to say : 
" Since the rose is tho ^ueen of flowers, she should 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 223 

be our example ; we should all bud, and leaf, and 
blossom, just as the rose does, if we wish to do it 
right." 

But you say : ^' The work of the Spirit of God 
should be the same, should it not ? 7^ it ever the 
same ? Does God allow any two men ever to per- 
form the same radical acts in the same manner i 
Does he not seem to abhor sameness ? Your 
Christian graces must be such as consist with your 
original nature, the character and disposition which 
God implanted in you at your birth. Tour expe- 
riences will be such as consist with your education 
and circumstances ; they will be unlike those of any 
other person. And you must not be discouraged 
because they do not now shine as do the graces of 
the older Christian ; nor think your graces are 
worthless because they are yet unpolished. The 
necrro slave in Brazil, when he works the diamond 
mines, is allowed his freedom when he finds an unu- 
sually large diamond. 

A poor slave who has never seen any diamonds 
but those that are worn upon the breasts of his mas- 
ter, his mistress, and their family and friends, is sent 
to the mines. Working away there, he picks up a 
large stone which looks as if it might be a diamond, 
if. it was only bright ; but the negro don't know 
what to think of it. He says it can't be a diamond ; 
but a companion thinks that it is one. The slave 



224 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

takes it to his master, who seizes it with exclama- 
tions, and declares to the slave : " Tou are a freo 
man. There never before was such a diamond 
found in these mines !" 

" What ! massa !" says the trembling slave, in 
great trepidation and bewilderment of joy ; for bad 
as freedom is for negroes, it always excites in them 
powerful emotions of pleasure. " What, massa ? 
dat dull stone a diamond ? It don't look nothing 
like what massa wear in his shirt bosom." 

" But, don't you know. Sambo, that diamonds 
have always to be taken to the lapidary, and 
ground and polished, sometimes for two or three 
years, before they are ready to wear ? This is a 
most valuable diamond ; and you are, from this very 
moment, a free man." 

There are diamonds in the rough among you ; 
but you will be ground and polished in good time. 
The Lapidary has you in hand. 



There are men who hold themselves aloof and 
look askance on this mighty revival."^ They see men 
hurrying along at noon towards the various prayer- 
meetings, and they say : " It's a fever which must 
have its way, and then it will subside." They see a 
young man going to the meeting, and think it no- 
thing to excite interest. They do not know that that 

* The great revival of 18ot-8. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 225 

yoTing man had come up to a point where, if 
■ nothing had occurred to save him, he would have 
been bound over to destruction at the very next 
step. They do not see, in some far distant village, 
the mother or the sister praying and weeping for 
him — no sound of a father's groan is heard — none 
of these things — the petitions that for years have 
assailed the heavens, both day and night, do not 
cling about the youth as he walks the street ; 
but that prayer-meeting God made to answer the 
desire of the parents, and to bring salvation to the 
son. And, eternity will show that the young man's 
walking towards that place of prayer was the begin- 
ning of his march to heaven. 



I WOULD rather be reckoned with the lowest and 
meanest children of God, than take rank with the 
crowned kings of the earth. I am sorry that all 
Christians don't live so as to glorify their heavenly 
Father ; but even as they are, I would rather clasp 
in my embrace the most imperfect one who really 
is born of God, than to link hands with monarchs 
"Wbere is the man (there are creatures by courtesy 
called men who are ashamed of their old-fashioned 
parents, or of their country relatives when they 
meet them in the city streets — it would take a regi- 
ment of these miscreants to make a decent-sized 

10* 



226 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

hair for the head of a genuine man) who would 
not rush from the presence and communion of 
princes, if he saw on some forlorn and ragged little 
child in the street, the lineaments of his father or 
his mother, and knew that the wanderer was his 
own brother? Do you tliink that man would not 
choose the ragged child to a dozen princes ? And 
in the Christian's face I ever see the lineaments 
of my beloved Father — God. 



A REVIVAL is as when a sportsman goes out with 
his gun, and sends its charge into a flock of pigeons. 
Some fall dead at once, and he sees and secures 
them ; but others, sorely hurt, limp off and hide, to 
die among the bushes. The best part of this^ revival 
is, that while you can only see those who are shot 
dead and fall down before you, there are, thank 
God! thousands in all parts of the land, being hit 
and wounded, to go off unnoticed to their own 
homes, and God heals them there. 



You will bear me witness that two years ago, 
when we were right in the midst of the great 
political excitement of 1856, I said once and 
again, that it was utterly impossible to intone the 

* The great revival of ISSY-S. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 227 

American public so with the sentiment that Christ- 
ianity must enter into and rule in politics as truly 
and entirely as elsewhere, without laying the foun- 
dations for a revival of religion as broad as the 
whole land. The seed then sown is now ripening. 



I THINK, when men sincerely try to work for God 
and souls, they are as men who go out to sow seed 
in a windy day. A few, very few may drop where 
they think that they sow all ; and when they go to 
seek for fruit, lo ! there is but a handful, and the 
men are disappointed and grieved. But their seed 
is growing in other fields, by the wayside, on the 
mountains, in the forest, everywhere ; and at the 
end they shall be astonished to behold their har- 
vest. 



We say to men, are you willing to serve Christ, 
and to love him ? They answer readily — '' Tes, we 
are ; but we want to be convertedP By this they 
mean that they want to have all that hlessedness of 
sensation that they have heard about; they want to 
find that every tendency and aptitude to sin is cut 
up by the roots. They want to be converted so 
that they'll never have anything more to do but to 
feel the joy of salvation. They want God to do all 
their fighting for them, and that is what he nevei 



228 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

will do. When a man is converted, he is set right^ 
armed for conflict, and ordered to go on through his 
enemies, until he reaches heaven. He often must 
have hard and bitter times in his struggles with 
himself; but God's grace will be his stay and con- 
solation, and at the other end he will find what he 
is too apt to look for at this. 



I HAVE hope, I have courage. Our churches are 
certainly purifying themselves; they are coming 
up to a higher type of religion. That John Baptist 
work before our last election prepared the way, and 
we are going forward. A speech like that just 
made in this meeting,^ twenty years ago would 
have blown it up like a bombshell ; now I don't 
think that we have even lost grace or good nature 
through it. God used to walk by inches ; now he 
goes by seven-league strides. 



This one thing I have noticed in everybody — the 
moment they come to a clear apprehension of the 
love of Christ, they turn right about upon the min- 
ister, or upon the Christians who have been labor- 
ing, perhaps for years, to bring them to that very 

^ By a well-known autj-slavery man. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 229 

point, and say, "Why didn't you tell ns this be- 
fore ?" 

Why, it's what we've been always telling them. 
I think that trying to point a man to the love of 
Jesus is like trying to show one a star that has just 
come out, the only star in the whole cloudy sky. 

" I can see no star," says the man. " Where h 

itr 

" Why, there ; don't you see ?" 

But the man shakes his head ; he can see no- 
thing. But by and by, after long looking, he 
catches sight of the star ; and now he can see 
nothing else for gazing at it. He wonders that he 
had not seen it before. 

. Just so it is with the soul that is gazing after the 
star of Bethlehem. Nothing in the world seems go 
hidden, so complex, so perplexing, as this thing, 
until it is once seen by the heart, and then, oh I 
there never was anything that ever was thought of 
that is so clear, so simple, so transcendently glo- 
rious. And men marvel that the whole world does 
not see and feel as they do. 



I THINK that I am a man-of-war, and every gun 
in me is a fifty-four-pounder; and when circum- 
stances call for the grace of indignation, I can beai 
my part ; but wrath is not so good as love. 



230 LIVING WC.;DS FROM PLYMOUTH FULPIT. 

The everlasting God, who sitteth at the head and 
top of universal dominion, makes himself the ser- 
vant of the very least and lowest of his creatures. 
Should we, then, be too proud to help each other ? 
Should we scorn to lend our help, or influence, or 
sympathy, to the least among our brothers ? How 
despicable must such a disposition in us look to 
God. 



There is nothing of which men know less than 
of themselves. They do not understand how their 
own characters are formed ; they stand in great 
doubt as to their own moral states before God. 
They cannot judge or take account of themselves, 
much less of their fellows. , It is a great comfort to 
know that there is One who perfectly knows all 
that is in us, and all that concerns us ; and who will 
take us for just our real worth. It is a comfort to 
trust in God. Oh ! when a little child is weary, 
marching through a desert towards his home, when 
he feels that he has no longer strength to travel, 
nor wisdom to direct his way, how glad is he to 
have his father take him in his arms to rest him. 
And when the child, just before falling asleep, 
raises his eyes for one more glance at the face above 
him, and sees it firm and calm and set for home, 
how sweetly he resigns himself to slumber, confi- 
dent that all is well. And thus do we, in tho 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 231 

wearj march through life, sometimes love to reclme 
upon the bosom of the Eternal Traveller, and take 
our hour of rest confiding in our God. 



There are men in this congregation who are in 
the situation of undermined towers of a beleaguered 
city. I have seen the enemy hollowing them out 
at the foundations, I have seen the kegs of gun- 
powder rolled in, and the train laid, and now I see 
the enemy hiding just behind his covert, with his 
slow match in his hand, waiting for the word to firo 
the train. I have warned the fated men, but they 
will not heed me. I cannot even pray for them 
any more ; but I live in daily expectation of the 
explosion ; I wait the hour which shall blow them 
to destruction ; for I know, almost as though it were 
already passed, that their doom is sealed. 

Now if any of you before me tremble, and think, 
despairingly, " It is I," probably it is not you. 
The anxious and troubled ones are not those who 
are given over to ruin. 



We are all so imperfect, that when we really 
consider of our case, remembering that God sees us 
as if by candles, into the very darkest parts of our- 
selves, we wonder how he can love even the best of 
us. All men believe that God exercises a general 



232 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

benevolence towards men ; but that his feelings to- 
wards them amount to actual foi^^ — yearning, ten- 
der, desiring love, and that in regard to the most 
wicked, the prowling thief, the vile lecher, the lost 
and desperate — even the murderer. This is what 
staggers us. That he loves not only his elect, who 
strive to serve him, but wretches, just because it is 
in his own disposition to love what needs love, is 
our God's chief glory. That he has something in 
his pure and holy nature which causes him to love 
sinners, while he abhors their sins, is Gospel teach- 
ing. Herein lies our hope and our salvation, for it 
was while we were yet at enmity with God that he 
sent his Son to die for us. 



A PIRATE cannot be pardoned for his piracy 
because he is generous, and in most respects a 
moral fellow. He is out on the high seas as a 
pirate, and is game for hemp and gallows, though 
he read his Bible every day, and do a thousand 
kind and good actions every week. But if he 
repent of his ways, and try to become an honest 
seaman, a few forgetful oaths may be forgiven him. 
If he is sailing right, and with right intentions, he 
will not be strictly dealt with, though he do knock 
down a man now and then when he ought not. 
So a man who has not accepted Christ a& his 



LIVING WOKDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 233 

Saviour, who is using himself just as God did not 
intend that he should be used, need not hope that 
his occasional good and generous deeds can do him 
any service in the matter of salvation. A man 
who has given himself to Christ can be forgiven 
and helped anew, if he halt and stumble, because 
his face is set in the right way, and his heart's 
desire is that he may attain unto a perfect obedi- 
ence. His sins will be each day pardoned by the 
mercy of him to whom he looks for all of this life, 
and that which is to come. 



There are no troubles which have such a wast- 
ing and disastrous effect upon the mind, as those 
which must not be told ; but which cause the mind 
to be continually rolling and turning over upon 
itself, in ceaseless convolutions and unrest. 



There are a thousand things which between the 
right persons are pure, but which are so sacred and 
delicate that the merest touch from the world can- 
not be given without causing the utmost pain. 
One who would go eavesdropping to catch the con- 
fidences of parent and child, husband and wife, or 
lover and lover, and would then, to the distress 
and confusion of those concerned, report what he 
had heard, is a scoundrel. 



234 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

The common way of representing God as being 
very anxious for and jealous of his own glory, has 
a bad influence on the xninds of men until they 
justly understand what his glory is. We are not 
left in doubt as to that. Moses prayed and said, 
" I beseech thee, show me thy glory." And the 
Lord passed by, proclaiming, not might, majesty, 
and dominion, not omnipotence, nor any awful at- 
tribute, but, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful 
and gracious, long suffering and abundant in good- 
ness and truth." These are the things in which 
God places his glory ; and this is the glory which 
man is called upon to promote, and which God is 
bent upon preserving. 



The old-fashioned lightning-rods were made all 
in one ; and when they drew the bolt it came with 
mighty force, and the crash often did much damage; 
but now the old plan is improved, and by having 
many points to the rod the lightning is scattered, and 
made to strike with greatly divided and dimin- 
ished force, and to sink harmlessly to the earth. 
If conviction were to strike the sinner as lio;htninor 
strikes the first sort of rod, the man could no more 
live than he could were he to look into the face of 
God. But through the mercy of Jesus Christ, it 
strikes only point by point, a separated and en» 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 236 

feebled force. There is no need, in most cases, that 
it should be otherwise. More feeling than is 
needed to produce right action is unnecessary. 
God be thanked that we are not allowed to see all 
the plague of our own hearts ! 



There is no mercy nor pardon for any man who 
does not feel himself utterly helpless and lost. A 
hopeless sinner is the only one who has reason to 
hope for forgiveness. If a man comes to Christ 
asking only a little help, thinking that he can patch 
himself up with that, without the humiliating con- 
fession of v-tter un worthiness, he will get nothing. 



There are materials enough in every man's mind 
to create a hell there. 



When my head, that is worth so little, aches, I 
feel it to be unspeakable relief that I may lay it 
upon his breast whose head is worth so much. 
God's head never aches. He does not have to 
study. He sees — sees the naked soul of every 
creature. ^ "When the apostle says to the Jews that 
the word of God is quick and powerful, etc., he 
brings to their mind the idea of the priest's exam- 
ination of the sacrificial victims. The Hebrew 
priests not only examined each animal externally, 



236 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

but they also took the beast and split him open at 
the back bone, and made a minute investigation 
into his internal state, before he was offered. This 
habit was the foundation of the form of expression 
in the verse ; * and then the apostle goes on to say, 
that before God every creature is laid open, as the 
sacrificial beast was before the priest. The argu- 
ment which he draws in these verses seems at a 
first view to be a strange one; but the apostle 
always speaks from depths which the world knows 
not how to sound. God's perfect knowledge of us, 
of all our countless interlacing thoughts, of the 
checkered play of all our passions, of all oiir acts 
and motives, of the very darkest and foulest pits 
and crevices down to the very bottom of our souls. 
The idea of his escapeless gaze, why it seems terri- 
hle^ if we think of him only from the standpoint 
of our sins; but when we begin to consider his 
perfect love, and his perfect honor, that he has 
known us from everlasting, even as he knows 
us now, and that he is never surprised (as we are 
ourselves) at anything we do, but has sworn tr, give 
us everlasting life, and to cleanse us from ail un- 
righteousness, if we only trust to him, we can begin 
to understand that, hecaicse he knows us, we may 
come holdly to his footstool for help in every time of 
trouble. I think it is not safe or best for us to give 

* Heb, iv. \%et sea. 



LIYING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 237 

unreserved confidence to any human friend, how- 
ever dear, for none are always altogether noble and 
unselfish, none that will not in some way, or at 
some time, abuse such confidence. The power of 
hiding ourselves from each other is most mercifully 
given, for men are wild 'beasts, and they would 
devour and destroy each other but for this protec- 
tion. But into the ear of God we may pour out 
each secret — our very self, and the confidence will 
be kept sacred. He invites our confidence, not 
because he does not already know all that we can 
tell him, but for our own sake he bids us pour out 
our souls to him, and he will, in return for our con- 
fidences, give us pity and consolation ; for he can 
be touched with a feeling for our infirmities. 



We look on men, and judge them ; but it is not 
right — we see but the outward appearance. I meet 
a man with a face so hard and grim, and an eye so 
cold, that I thank God that I do not live with that 
man. But if I could see the path by which he has 
come up to where he now is — if I could see how he 
leaned with all the weight of a once generous and 
confiding heart, on what failed him in time of need 
— if I could see how he has been stood from under, 
and been pierced and bored, and the very life-blood 
of his affections pressed out by a thousand troubles 



238 LIVING WOKDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

and crosses, and perhaps by the infernal machi- 
nery of the household^ I should feel more like 
throwing my arms about him, and trying to console 
him for all that had made him what he is. 

Whatever there is in election and reprobation — > 
and I don't know what there is in them, therefore 
I never preach them, for I will not preach what I 
cannot at all understand — there certainly is nothing 
that hinders any man from gaining salvation. 
When /undertake to preach election, I turn to the 
last chapter of the Bible, and read : " And the 
Spirit and the Bride say come," etc. It iBthelast 
utterance of the sacred volume, and it is sincere. 
If I doubted God's perfect sincerity and simplicity, 
in such invitations, I should say that those who 
worshipped him were the sinners, and those who 
refused to pay him homage were the saints. I 
think the doctrines of the Bible are like flowers 
that are in the morning all covered with spiders' 
webs. They are obscured and mystified by mis- 
creant theological spiders. There is nothing so 
simple that these men will not change it into a 
mystery, which they themsjelves, nor any who hear 
or study them, shall be able to understand. 



A MAN who impoverishes his soul for the sake of 
worldly gain, is like one who, desiring to learn to 



LIVING WORDS, FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 239 

play upon a harp, tears out all its strings, where- 
with to pay for his tuition. He gains gold, per- 
haps, but when it is his, he has left to him no capa- 
city to enjoy it. 

' •. 

PERFECTfoN has usually been understood to mean 
absence of evil, but it does not mean that any more 
than absence of weeds means harvest. 

The Bible measure of perfection is the measure 
of the fullness of the stature of Jesus Christ. This 
ought long ago to have settled the much vexed 
question of Christian perfection. Until a man can 
measure himself by Christ, and come up to his 
stature, he must not claim to be perfect, and he 
will not arrive at that fullness in this world. Con- 
version is not instant deliverance from all wrong 
tendencies^ from all errors and follies, nor even 
from all sins. It is but the leginning of a good 
character. 

There may be instances where men are converted 
into a very high state of righteousness at the out- 
set ; but I Jcnow that this is rarely the case. Gene- 
rally, the young convert is but set about, and has 
his way to cut through ten thousand native heart- 
born foes. There are his passions and his appetites 
that for many years have had their own head- 
long will ; and there are all the selfish instincts ; 
there is rampant pride to be subjugated, and tho 



240 LIVING WORDS FROM. PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

work is long and hard. But every man is encou- 
raged to work hopefully by the command : " Work 
out your own salvation with fear and trembling ; 
for it is God that worketh in you, both to will and 
to do of his own good pleasure." Let no hard, 
fault-finding man of the world look upon the 
Christian when he fails or falls, and say, "He is 
no Christian else he would do better than that." 
He will often fall and fail ; but he must always rise 
again, and with renewed courage and faith go for- 
ward working out his own salvation. He never 
need despair, for God worketh in him, and that is 
strength enough for anything. 

There are some men who have not much native 
strength or stability of character, and though while 
they are out of the way of trial they walk well, 
when they are among the every-day influences of 
life, they are drawn far from what they know to be 
right. Here in church, where there is prayer and 
singing, they feel all right, and are sure that they 
are very near to heaven ; they are inspired by the 
spirit of the place, and feel melted with love and 
devotion. But to-morrow they go over to New 
York. They don't hear many hymns there. Reli- 
gion is not much the subject of conversation and 
consideration over there ; it is -all sharpness, shrewd- 
ness, warding off, grasping, stocks, money-market, 
etc. ; and the man goes with the hurrying, hasty 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 241 

tide. Selfishness, duplicity, greed, are about him 
and within him, and so he wanders from the way 
and does a hundred wrong things. But by and 
by is his meeting evening ; and among his church 
brethren the wavering man sits down to hear of 
Jesus and of duty, and of the experiences of 
others. The same nature that caused him to go so 
wrong when among those whose influence was 
wrong, now draws him another way. A brother 
rises and gives utterance to some touching thought, 
the man is broken down at once; tears stream 
down his cheeks, his heart swells, he must rise and 
speak — he sings with his brethren, and his face 
shines with inward happiness. He feels very good 
again ; and, for the time, he is as sincere as any- 
thing can be ; but the world looks on and cries, 
" Look at him ! he is an old knave and hypocrite." 
He is no more a hypocrite than a thermometer is. 
It may indeed le that he is not a Christian. He 
whose feet are upon the Eock of Ages should stand 
more firmly than this ; but he is sincere. 



There are many Christians who in their afifec- 
tions are thoroughly submissive. When they suflTer 
there they grow more sweet and humble — their 
trials make them better. Though their affections 
are deep and tender they bow before God when he 

11 



242 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH TULPIT. 

touches their hearts in them, and they say and feel 
that he does all things well, and that he is blessed ; 
but you take these same men and trouble them in 
their business, and where is their Christian submis- 
sion then? — apparently they are no better than 
infidels. They have not educated themselves to 
yield their wills to the will of God in their husiness 
affairs : afflictions there cause them, as it seems, to 
grow worse and worse all the time. 



At first it is sufficient that the Christian believes 
the truths of the Gospel because they are in the 
Bible, given by the Spirit of God. 

When first the traveller follows the direction of 
the guide-board, he does so because it says that is 
the way to go ; but when he has gone that way 
once, and again, and finds that it always ends 
just where he intended to stop, he looks at the 
guide-board no more. He has forgotten it, for he 
does not need it now. He believes in the road, be- 
cause he^knows by experience that it will lead him 
whither he desires to go. 

Thus should the Christian, of ten or a score ot 
years, believe in the vital truths of religion, not 
alone because Christ declares them, but because 
he has felt and known them in his own heart and 
life. Faith is first, but afterwards is actual know- 
ledge — we do " Tcnow of the doctrine." 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 243 

Many persons have read the Bible so much that 
to them it has come to have very little practical 
force or meaning. A man will read aloud the pas- 
sage on '' charity," or " love," as it should be ren- 
dered, and not an echo of its meaning will be in his 
heart. He will read it reverently, as he thinks a 
Christian man should, and will then arise and begin 
straightway to be not '* long suffering" nor " kind;" 
not to bear all things, believe all things, or hope all 
things ; not to think no evil ; but to he " easily pro- 
voked," and to behave unseemly, without one pass- 
ing thought that what he has just read should have 
aught to do with his daily life among his associates. 
This scripture is thus a dead letter. 



If you desire a new church which will accommo- 
date six thousand people, if you will raise the full 
amount required for its erection and furnishing, I 
will engage to speak in it so that all shall hear me. 
I will do my part in the contribution also ; but I 
tell you beforehand, that I will have nothing to do 
with building a church, or with preaching in it, of 
which, when it is finished, even the poorest work- 
man can truly say, as he stands and looks upon it, 
" I lost by that job." 

If you will have such a building for me to preach 
in, no man, from the largest contractor down to 



244 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

the poorest laborer that carries a hod, raust be 
able to sav that he lost a single penny by the enter- 
prise. Money sufficient to pay to each man what 
is just and right must be raised, or the matter must 
be dropped quicker than it was taken up. As to 
my being able to speak so as to be heard in any 
part of such a building as you contemplate, I should 
think you might be satisfied of that by the way in 
which I am speaking now. 



Men are agreed in this, that all do glory in some- 
thing. Each one glories according to his society. 
The honesty and gentleness, the truth and guileless- 
heartedness, which are the glory of the true gentle- 
man, would render a man the mark for scorn and 
contempt among burglars, and gamblers, and alder- 
men, and other thieves. 



We are not to try to crush out any quality. If 
we put a ball through the head of a wild* young 
horse, he will be made quiet and harmless enough ; 
but he will be good for nothing. The right way is 
to break him, and harness him ; then he will be fit 
for use. Just so it is with the faculties of a man's 
mind. They all need breaking, harnessing, and 
right directing; but they must not be killed or 



LIYINQ WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 245 

maimed. That faculty whose perversion becomes 
pride is the gift of God, and he has given directions 
for its proper action. '' Let him that glorieth glory 
in this^ that he understandeth and knoweth me." 
To '* glory" means to value one's self; to feel self- 
complacencj", because of some real or fancied supe- 
riority. But we are forbidden to glory in anything 
except in our knowledge of God. 

How far do men come from obedience to this in- 
junction ! They glory in everything tut that. 
One walks the streets with such an air that vou 
would say he supposes that God had fashioned, 
a very masterpiece when he fashioned him — yet 
no ; it is not even his body that he so much glories 
in, as in the things which he has stuck on to it. 
He glories in his dress, and in his perfumes. 
Another glories in his muscular form, in his fine 
proportions, and in his strength. He goes thi-ough 
the streets almost wishing that some one would 
come at him that he might display his power of 
self-defence. The pride of these men lies in the 
things which they possess in common with the 
beasts of the field. But others glory in their riches 
and their skill ; others again in their genius. 
These things are not to be despised. Even riches 
God reckons as good ; for they are among the re- 
wards promised to those who diligently serve him. 
Beauty and attractiveness of person, and the pos 



246 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

session of winning manners have this much in them : 
they are the gift of God; they give pleasure to 
others, and ought to do so to their owners. They 
should be a cause of gratitude, but never of " glory- . 
ing." It is a sortof organic affectation with some to 
pretend to despise -personal symmetry and beauty. 

Wealth, in the economy of Providence is made a 
powerful means of civilization, and it is right to 
value it, in its place. It is good, sometimes it is 
even grand, to know how to fill the day with 
profitable transactions, to make every movement 
tell for the advancement of some one enterprise ; 
but men should not glory in their business or exe- 
cutive force of skill, or in their sharp foresighted- 
ness. They should glory in this that they under- 
stand and know the Lord. 

Perhaps there may be men now before me who 
are saying: "I have valued myself all wrong — 
God help me — I will try to benefit by this dis- 
course ;" and perhaps some man will go home and 
make a note in his journal to the effect that his 
heart was touched, and he resolved to do differ- 
ently for the future. Monday morning he will rise, 
and as he starts for the city he will say to himself: 
" Now, remember^^ As he walks towards the ferry, 
a quick step sounds behind him, and a laughing 
voice says, as he gets a friendly slap on the shoul- 
der : " Ah ! ah ! but that was ^a capital hit of yours 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 247 

— that mortgage, you know — I've heard all about 
it. But didn't you trip that fellow's heels up well? 
I declare ; it was capital." 

"Xo! you didn't hear about it, though, did 
you !" 

The man is instantly as full of vain glory as 
champagne is full of bubbles. Sunday and its im- 
pressions are forgotten ; the week is here ; his good 
resolves are gone — where the bubbles go. That 
one compliment in regard to an act of wicked 
shrewdness, has shot him all through of infernal 
electricity, and he is a business nian until the next 
Sunday. In what does that man glory ? 

As we ascend in the ranks of humanity, we won- 
der on what the great thinkers, the great inventors, 
the painters, the poets, the orators, and architects, 
most valued themselves. We think we should like 
to know what Shakspeare, that great student of 
iiuman nature, thought of '' the immortal Will," 
when he, in turn, arose before him, as probably he 
did — and we think it would be grand to know what 
Dante and old Homer valued most in themselves. 
Then our thoughts, still lifting themselves, look on 
the angels, and wonder what is their self-estimate. 
We tremble as we approach God, and hardly dare 
to wish to hear in what he glories. He, infinitely 
above all things that are created, the architect of 
all architects. Why, St. Peter's is a mere rat-hole 



24:8 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

compared to the smallest worlds that God flings 
from his fingers faster than sparks flj from the black- 
smith's anvil; but he has told us in what he glories : 
and first and chiefest is his "loving kindness." 
Not merely kindness — it is a compound word. 
There are ten thousand kindnesses that have in them 
not one spark of love ; but that word, " loving," has 
a personal meaning — it shows us that there is the 
tie of affection between us and our Creator. God 
glories in his " loving kindness, his judgment, and 
his righteousness," and man should glory in under- 
standing and trying to imitate the same. 

I think it would be a good sermon for a man to 
take pen and paper and write down, first, all the 
things in which he does glory ; next, the things in 
which he ought to glory ; and then an indiscrimi- 
nate list of his acts, and thoughts, and plans, and 
wishes. But I think it would be easier to induce 
men to go alone, at midnight, and in the dark, into 
the charnel-house, and drive a nail into a cofiin, 
after the manner of the superstition of some, than 
to go down into the depths of their own selves, and 
write out truly, with real judgment writing, what 
there they would see. 



Coin that is current in one place, is valueless in 
another. Suppose an Indian, far in the western 



LIVING WOEDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 249 

wilds, were to say, " I will become a trader with 
the whites. I will go to New York city and buy 
up half the goods there, and come back and sell 
them, and then what a rich Indian I shall be." He 
then collects all his wampum beads, which are his 
money ; and compared with other Indians he is very 
rich, and away he jom-neys to yonder city. Im- 
agine him going into Stewart's, and offering his 
wampum there, in exchange for their goods. They 
are refused. They were money in the woods — in 
the city they are worthless. And there are thou- 
sands of men who are carrying with them, to offer 
at the judgment, what is no better than the Indian's 
beads. They are reckoning on their generosity, 
their prompt payment of all their debts, their vari- 
ous good natural qualities ; but when they present 
them, they will all be found worthless trash. The 
things that have made them strong, and valued, 
and important here, will there be worse than use- 
less to them. 



Critics say that Eaphael's transfiguration trans- 
gresses the rules of art. It is two pictures in one. 
Christ is represented upon the mountain top, in his 
glory, the disciples having fallen, in wonder and awe, 
to the earth ; beneath this scene is the one of the 
possessed child, about whom the horror-stricken dis- 
ciples stand, unable to afford relief. With the 

11* 



250 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

merit or fault of this double representation I have 
nothing to do ; all that I know is this, that picture 
is a figure of human life. Above, Christ often 
hovers in glorious light ; while below, the devil is 
tearing the child. 



What a man is, is not what he is on Sunday, 
when the organist plays to him, and the minister 
plays to him, and all good influences play to him ; 
but it is what he is in the -week-day, when his life 
is wearing, and working, and weaving for him the 
garment in which he is to stand and be judged. 



Many that are last shall be first, and the first 
shall be last. There are men whose entrance into 
Wall street is like the appearance of blue sky after 
a northeast storm. They move along, leaving a 
trail of bows and smiles, and heartburnings and 
envy behind them. How the sallow faces light up 
as old Moneybags approaches. He is pointed after. 
" Do you know him ? A wonderful man ! — worth 
his millions — smart ap lightning," etc. That old 
obese abomination ot money is their god ; and yet 
there is not one particle of genuine worth in him. 
He has utterly defiled and destroyed his manhood 
in the manufacturing of wealth ; he is a great 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 251 

epitomized, circulating hell on earth, and when he 
dies, hell will groan — one more woe. 

But there are other men — they are seen some- 
times ; business-men say of them : " Oh, yes, we 
know them — clever fellows enough — mean very 
well — do some good among the poor — have classes 
in mission schools, etc. They are just suited for 
that; but, bless your life! there might be a million 
such men in the world, and nothing would ever be 
done." 

These men die, and heaven rings with new shouts 
of melody. There they are known and waited for, 
and with triumphant joy are welcomed home. 



The artist, when he begins to learn to draw, 
finds the greatest difficulty in making straight lines 
and circles, but when he has coaxed the juice of his 
brain down into his fingers, so that they think, he 
has but to give one glance at the object he desires 
to represent, and the lines appear, the circles fly off 
from his fingers, and the picture is drawn, almost 
without thought. Thus involuntary should be 
right' doing with the Christian. He should form for 
himself a settled habit, a sort of refined, spiritual 
instinct, by which he should be led constantly and 
almost unconsciously, to shun the evil, and to 
choose the good. 



252 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

Christian men, what testimony does your life 
yield to your sons? Is it that religion, your duty 
to God, has the first place in your regard, and busi- 
ness success the subordinate place? Or is your 
practical life (I do not say your theoretic life, that 
is more frequently right), such as to cause them to 
conclude that you think religion a good thing, but 
that a man Tnust succeed in business, anyhow, and 
after that he ouo-ht to serve God as well as he can. 



Some men have pronounced the rebukes of con- 
science to be the pimishment for sin. I marvel 
how they can reason thus ; or I should marvel if I 
did so at anything in man. Either all is marvellous 
in him, or nothing is. 

But can any reasonable being believe that the 
Creator would institute a punishment which should 
deal most severely with the smallest sins, and least 
severely with the greatest? "Would God decreee 
that the worst man should bear least punishment, 
and the best man most ? Yet look at facts, and 
deny not that this is the way in which conscience 
punishes. Everybody knows that it is the first and 
least sins th^t are most soundly scourged by this 
feeling. It is in proportion as a man is pure that 
his sins aflB.ict him. It is at the beginning of a 
wrong course that we run against the spears, that 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 253 

we kick against the pricks, that we are excoriated. 
When a man is in the deeper places of guilt, he is 
generally far more comfortable than he was before 
he had descended so low. How can any one ima- 
gine that the Almighty would contrive such a 
miserable, one-sided mode of punishment ? 



Eepentakce is not feeling bad about your sins, 
or talking humbly about them, or calling yourself 
hard names, or thinking that you are the greatest 
of sinners, or writing in your journal about your 
depravity, or praying, or going forward to the anx- 
ious seat ; it is turning from your siiis to righteous- 
ness. When you feel bad enough to do that, it is 
sufficient. More feeling is useless, and often dan- 
gerous. It is this £ring up of feeling which causes 
most of the mischief complained of in revivals. 
There is no merit in deep feeling. It is no credit 
to a man that God was obliged to shake him over 
fire and brimstone to make him a convert. Turn — 
blessed are they who, the moment they are made 
to see that they are sinners, and are lost without 
the Saviour, go straight to him, without waiting to 
be lashed thither — such are the best conversions — 
such are the most noble natures. But some have 
presented God and his law in such a way, as to 
ofifend against all of taste, generosity, and manLi- 



254 LIVING W(. .bs FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

ness — ^I had almost said arainst everv affection there 
is in man ; and then they call the stirring that 
there is within against this view of God the rebel- 
lion of the natural heart, and they teach that there 
must now be a pitched battle between God and the 
soul — God saying, '' You shall submit," and the 
soul declaring, "I won't;" until, finally, when 
driven to the very verge of perdition, by the thun- 
ders of the law, the soul turns short about and 
hastens to God — rather than fall into hell. There 
may be, there are, experiences like this, but they 
are not the rule, they are not needful— at least not 
to many. In my office of pastor, I am often called 
upon to talk with persons who are in trouble, 
because they think they were converted too easy, 
or because they never had such times as Payson 
had, when he had dyspepsia, and fasted, and had 
horrible views of " the exceeding sinfulness of 
sin." '^If I was really converted, why was I not 
converted just as Brother A. was? If conversion 
is the work of God, it will be alike, won't it? 
There will be no mistaking it." 

Men are the work of God — did ever you see two 
7nen who were in all respects exactly alike ? God's 
taste evidently does not choose uniformity. 

Two ships come into New York harbor. One 
has crossed the ocean with a favoring breeze. She 
had all sails set, everything below and aloft spread 



LIVING WORDS FJROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 255 

to the pleasant wind, and not one hindrance was in 
her way. But another soon enters, and everybody 
hastens to board her. The captain of the fortunate 
craft is one of the first to greet his brother captain : 
"" How came you in such a plight ? Did you 
have a storm?" he says. *' Storm!" repeats the 
other, " I guess we did. I've been upon the ocean 
forty years (you know with captains the last storm 
is the worst that they ever saw), and I never saw a 
time like the one we've just passed — we've been near 
foundering a dozen times. We've lost our top- 
masts and our bowsprit, our sails are torn into rib- 
bons, our bulwarks are stove in, we've lost our 
boats ; I've lost all I had, and my men are nearly 
worn out. It has been hurricanes one side or 
another all the way across, and we have but just 
got into port alive." The captain of the uninjured 
ship goes back to her decks and says, dubiously, 
shaking his head : " Well, boys, I begin to doubt 
whether we really are in New York, after all. It 
can't be that we have crossed the ocean, we never 
had any experience like thatP 



Never did a summer pass that did not smite on 
the storehouse of autumn, and cause it to open its 
doors and bring forth of its abundant treasures. 



256 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

There was a time when honesty, truth and fair-' 
ness of general behavior were the chief things that 
religious teachers insisted upon ; and men almost 
forgot that Christianity had any inner life ; but the 
reaction came, and to this external religion arose 
an opposition. The defrauded faculties asserted 
their claim, and now was the era of intense spiritual 
devotees, who taught that there might be a true 
and vital Christianity in a man's heart, distinct 
from, and independent of, his outward life and con- 
duct. It was faith and works at war with each 
other, and religiously bombarding each other with 
texts; instead of walking hand in hand in holy 
union. There is no .way in which a man can 
prove that he has true faith in his heart, except 
by good works in his life 



Many persons suppose that there is required, in 
order to a man's satisfactory conviction that he is a 
child of God, a vivid and unmistakable assurance 
of faith. They think that the heart is as wax, and 
like inert wax they suppose it lies, until the Lord 
takes his signet ring or seal, and stamps it with his 
name. Then, after feeling that impression, the soul 
is certain of its son-ship. It may wander away, 
and the name may be covered from sight by ten 
thousand faults and sins, but down beneath them 
all, it is thercy and it cannot be erased. No\^ this 



LIVING WOEDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 257 

is not the way in which the Spirit of God usually 
bears witness with our spirit that we are the sons 
of God. Without doubt there is immediate aetua'. 
contact of God's Spirit- with the spirit of man, 
whenever this is best ; but ordinarily all our expe* 
riences are made to come to us through the medium 
of our own natural states ; through the influences 
of things around us, and within us. Anything 
that produces in the mind the reasonable, sober 
conviction that we are his, is the true witness of 
God's Spirit with ours. The evidences of a man's 
Christianity (if he is a Christian) are not so diffi- 
cult and serious a matter as men think. Why, any 
one who has sense sufficient to judge whether he is 
a good citizen or not, or whether he is the aflfec- 
tionate son of his own parents, can tell whether he 
is a child of God. '^ If ye love me ye will keep 
my commandments." " Ah !" you sigh, " but 1 
don't always keep them." Well, ask that little 
child how he knows that he loves his parents ; he 
will answer you, "Because I love to do what they 
want me to do." " Why, my dear child, you are 
always doing what they doin^t want you to do. You 
can't prove your love to them by that rule." The 
poor child hangs its head, and says, " I don't know 
as I can." He cannot answer you. You ask again, 
" My child, how do you Tc^now that you love your 
narents ?" " Why, why I do love to please them 



258 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

better than anything else in the world." "Ah! 
but I have just shown you that you do not always 
try to please them ; how can you say that this is 
your proof of love to them?" The child is 
silenced ; but in his little heart he knows that in 
spite of his disobedience he does desire to do his 
parents' will ; and that he does love them, whether 
he perfectly obeys them or not. He thinks, per- 
haps, " I am a poor child, a hard child to manage ; 
I give them a great deal of trouble, but I love 
them ; I am their own child after all. They would 
never give me up ; and nothing on earth could take 
me from them." 

Faith is the life of a child, and that is why the 
Saviour declares, "Except ye become as little 
children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of 
heaven." When, therefore, you examine yourself 
by the rule of obedience, and find that you are not 
perfect there, see if it is your greatest desire to 
honor Christ by keeping his commandments, and 
if you are trying to do so ; and if it is the grief 
and pain of your life that you fail as you do. If 
you wish, more than anything else, to be his ; if 
you yearn to have him for your friend ; if you feel 
that you must and will helong to him or to nohody^ 
you need no more remarkable " witness." If you 
were not his before, you are so now; so enjoy him 
afresh — His sweet making love again. 



LIVING WOBTDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 259 

Suppose one of the sheep in a fold were to go to 
the shepherd, and say, " I think I'm your sheep, 
because you get six pounds of wool off me ;" and 
another should say, "And I think I'm your sheep, 
because you get four pounds of wool from me ;" 
and a third, " I hope I am your sheep, but I don't 
know, for you only get three pounds of wool from 
me ; and sometimes it is but two." Finally, sup- 
pose one poor scraggy fellow comes who don't know 
whether he is a sheep or a goat, and makes his 
complaint ; the shepherd would say, " I know who 
are the best sheep, and who are the worst. I wish 
you could all give^me ten pounds of wool; but 
whether you give me ten pounds or one, you are 
all mine. I bought you, and paid for you, and you 
are all in my fold, and you every one belong to 
me." It is not how much a sheep brings his owner 
which proves him his. The proof that the sheep 
belongs to the shepherd is, that the shepherd 
bought him and takes care of him. 



The main thing is to be determined to go towards 
heaven. If the man resolutely aims for that place, 
he will not fail to reach it in the end, however 
much he may wander off his track ; pushed this way 
and that by temptations. The most unskillful navi- 
gator may gain the port for which he steers, even 



260 IJVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

thougli his course across the sea be zigzag, if 
every time he takes the sun he comes back to his 
course, and perseveres in his endeavors to gain his 
desired haven. He may justly say : '' Though I am 
a bungler, and a very poor navigator, I am no 
smuggler, no pirate; I work hard to gain my 
port, and I believe that I shall gain it in safety." 
Thus the Christian often is constrained to cry out : 
^' Lord, thou knowest that I mean to hold an even 
course towards thee ; but thou knowest, also, how I 
am pushed off here by wrong impulses, and drawn 
off there by vain desires — how pride, and vanity, 
and selfishness impede my way ; and how often my 
appetites and passions trip up my feet, and cast me 
to the earth. Yet I will come back to the path. I 
do desire to keep it. The settled and deliberate 
resolve and aspiration of mj soul is to walk in the 
way of thy commandments." 



When I was at Fall Eiver, I was obliged to rise 
at four o'clock in the morning to take the trni'i.* I 
took my carpet-bag in my hand and ran, but was in 
trouble lest I might be running directly from the 
cars instead of towards them. There was not a per- 
son in sight; but I saw a light in one upper 
window. A watcher was there. I rang the bell, 

9 

and asked information as to my way. It was given. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 261 

I was about right — only needed a little hel]^ ; and 
HDw, knowing that I was in the right way, I did 
run. A bird might have counted it doing well to 
keep up with me ; for I expected every moment to 
hear the bell, and the rushing off of the train, and 
then I should be there and my people without a 
sermon for Sunday. Only let me be sure that 
I was in the right way, and I was willing to run. 
So says the Christian : " Only let me be sure that I 
am on my way to heaven, and there is nothing that 
I am not willing to do or to bear." 

Well, if you are so earnest, know that Christ is 
the way ; and if you are desirous to cast away all 
that shall hinder your race, I think you need not 
doubt that you are already in it. 



There is nothing on earth better than a good 
woman ; and there is nothing on earth worse than a 
wicked one. The nature of a true, pure-hearted 
woman is lifted up until it well-nigh touches that 
of angels; but the nature of a bad woman strikes 
beneath, until her roots are fed by the fiery sap of 
hell. 



There are some things that money cannot buy. 
The spot of land where your child lies buried, 
could it buy that ? Or the last letter or gift of the 
best friend that you ever had on earth ? 



262 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

Ahab was just such a man as would have done to 
appoint governors for Kansas. He could cause the 
doino: of mean and wicked acts, and yet not know 
anything about them. He was not responsible for 
the murder of Naboth — of course not — how should 
he know what his wife intended ? He knew that 
she had promised him the vineyard ; and he knew 
that when she had determined to give it to him, it 
v/as ah^eady as good as his. He was aware, also, 
that the woman who was thus pledged to oblige 
him knew no law which could stand a moment 
against her desires. Resolute, crafty, cruel, not 
*' hard faced ;" for she was, probably, very beauti- 
ful, she marched straight on to the accomplishment 
of her purposes, whatever might be trampled under 
her feet in her way. But he gave no orders ; he 
merely said : " There is my desk, Jezebel ; there 
is my pen, my papers, and my signet; use them 
as you choose. Of course, you will do nothing 
wrong." Imagine the two to look at each other 
just here. " Of course^ Jezebel, you will do no- 
thing wrong." 

No doubt Naboth might have had twice the 
worth of his vineyard had he chosen to sell it. He 
might have had a great deal better land, and have 
raised three times as many grapes. But he knew 
that there were some crops raised on his farm which 
he could get nowhere else. The larger yield of 



LIVING WORDS FEOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 263 

grapes rniglit be very well in their way ; but he, 
beneath the trees and the vines under which his 
fathers had for generations sat, and where, beside 
his mother, he had sported when a child, and where 
his brothers and sisters were born, could drink 
sweeter nectar out of airy cups, than all the juice 
of grapes ever pressed upon the hills of Samaria. 
Nabotli was right to hold on to his home. There 
were garnered memories that all the wealth of 
Ahab could not buy. 

But Jezebel wrote her letters to the elders and to 
the nobles of her kingdom — to the " Elders and the 
Nobles /" — and she ordered them to proclaim a 
fasL When people meditate a deed of wickedne-ss 
particularly atrocious, they often feel that 'they had 
better have a fast first. What devout men those 
" Elders " must have been ! and how noble those 
" Nobles !" How acceptable to God must such 
fasts be ! And they set Naboth on high among the 
people, and the false witnesses were found ; no 
trouble about that, when the queen commanded it, 
and the good man was dragged out and stoned, and 
dogs licked his blood. Well ! Naboth deserved 
liis fate — he was " an agitator." He agitated the 
king ; he would not let him have his vineyard for a 
kitchen garden ; and Ahab was so agitated about it 
that he couldn't eat his dinner; and that agitated 
Jezebel very much. She did not like to see the 



264: LIVING TVORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

king rolled over on the bed, like a great baby, with 
his face to the wall. And they were " the govern- 
ment " — so Naboth was an agitator of the govern- 
ment of his country ; and he deserved stoning. 

When this agitator was dead, Ahab went down 
to take possession of the coveted vineyard, which, 
as its owner had died as a criminal, lapsed from his 
heirs to the crown. 

As the king was complacently viewing his prize, 
lo ! there stood before him, the first growth of this 
desired garden, sprung to full size in one night — the 
prophet who was sent to pronounce to the wicked 
monarch his doom. 

" In the place where the dogs licked the blood of 
Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood — even thine — and 
the dogs shall eat Jezebel by the walls of Jezreel." 
And this was literally fulfilled ; for they were soon 
after miserably slain and dog eaten. When Ahab 
and Jezebel laid their plans, and executed their 
wickedness, they had forgotten God. Men do so 
still. Because he that sitteth in the heavens keeps 
quiet, they think that he is not regarding ; but he 
is. Poor Naboth may have felt that the Lord 
knew not his wrongs and his distress, but we see 
how that was. And we see, too, by this account, 
how God looks upon the unrighteous actions caused 
by the hands of agents. Ahab was not going to 
hold himself accountable for the results of what Je- 



LIVING WOKDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 265 

zebel, his agent, chose to do. God, however, held 
him to a strict account. Retribution has a long 
arm ; it reaches down through many years, and it 
is a sheriff from which there is no escape, however 
skillfully we may dodge all others. Thousands and 
ten thousands of men, would they speak out their 
secret convictions, would say that the very wicked- 
ness upon which they had built their highest hopes 
of worldly prosperity and happiness was the open- 
ing of the pit which whelmed them in destruction. 

We must not too sharply blame the elders and 
the nobles for their part in this matter. They were 
but obeying the law. They did not want to trouble 
their minds, or endanger their interests, about the 
wild and romantic notions of " the higher law." 
As good citizens they must obey the requirements 
of government. 

This is exactly what was done in our country at 
the time of the enactment of the fugitive slave law, 
and there were not wanting efforts to induce the 
clergy to exhort the people to submit to the law's 
requirements, and to aid in its enforcement. 

The young ministers were very refractory ; but 
there were numbers of the old, and hitherto respect- 
ed and honorable clergymen, who were prevailed 
upon to aid in trying to cloak that enormous ini- 
quity. They did not cloak it ; they only uncloaked 
then^elvcNs. 

12 



266 LIVING WORDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

Daniel Webster stooped to influence these men 
to this step, both by letters and b}^ personal address, 
and it was taken.. When our own elders advocate 
the enforcement of this manner of government, why 
should we bear too severely upon the elders who 
procured the death of Naboth ? 



It is not worth while for any one who is yet 
young, who has not yet soiled virtue, or honesty, or 
manly honor, to try the eifect of doing so. Young 
men, be true to virtue, be honest, be religious, so 
shall you have peace in your later years. 



A Christian, just born into the kingdom, is often 
like a loaf of bread when its materials are just put 
together. The baker has mixed them, and left the 
bread to rise. You go to the dough and say, " Are 
ymi bread?" ^^No," says the dough, "I am not." 
In an hour you go again and ask, "Are you bread ?" 
"No, I am not," replies the dough; "I feel a little 
stirring" (said with a rising of the shoulders) "in 
me, but I am not bread." In two hours more you 
try, "Are you bread now?" "No," is still the 
reply, " I'm sponge ; but not bread. I'm not 
baked, nor eaten yet." But by and by, after the 
baker gives it the final kneading, and it is ready 
for the oven, when it is iaked^ it owns that now it 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 267 

is really bread. Yet it has gained no new element 
since the first mixing. The kingdom of heaven in 
the heart is like leaven which a woman hid in a 
measure of meal until the whole was leavened. 



It has been said that a statesman will not soil his 
hands by doing the vile and dirty work that is de- 
manded by the present system of politics ; but that 
he keeps for his use persoys who are not squeamish 
as to what they do, so long as they are well paid 
for it. But the story of Ahab tells how that sort of 
management is dealt with by the Lord. 

There are men in these cities known as abolition- 
ists who, when occasion calls for it, shut their eyes 
and bid their southern agent do the best he can for 
them. They say, " I must do business ; and I can't 
afford to lose ten thousand dollars by my southern 
customers. 'Tis a bad affair, no doubt. Don't let 
me hear a word about it. Here, I leave the matter 
with you. Do the best you can for me. I wash my 
hands of the whole husinessJ^ 

Ah ! it's rather diflBcult getting that sort of stain 
off. I tell you, the pious merchant, seated in his 
slippers comfortably by his Sunday fire, reading his 
religious paper, while his agent at the South is sell- 
ing men, women, and children, body and soul too 



268 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

often, is held accountable for all the wrong, disaster 
and misery thus caused. 

Dou*t you believe it? I appeal to God's judg- 
ment bar ; and we will take up the subject and de- 
bate it again there. 

Any dishonest deed done by the most extensive 
and respected firm — the making out of false bills 
of sale — the giving in of wrong invoices at the 
custom-house — no matter if these things be done 
by the hand of the greenest clerk or the last and 
smallest boy employed in the business, will be reck- 
oned for, first and most rigorously^ with the first in 
power in that firm. 

Ah ! there is a great deal of craft and cunning 
among men — they are very shrewd and subtile, 
and can go far and long in artifice and duplicity ; 
but God is a match for them all. 



A GREEDY man is not long in growing covetous, 
a-id when the grasping and avaricious passions be- 
C3me swollen and inflamed, there is always danger 
that they will break out into some deeds of deeper 
wickedness. He who finds himself feeling sorry 
that another's house is larger and better, or that 
his prospects in life are fairer than his own, may 
be sure that the worst form of envy is upon him ; 
before he knows it, he will covet that which is 



LIVING WORDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 269 

another's ; and then he will be in perpetual danger 
of committing crime, in order to obtain it. The 
more he looks at what he wants, the more he will 
want it ; which is always the case with us when we 
want what we must not have. It is right to wish to 
have good things like those owned by our neigh- 
bors, if we can make fair trade for them ; and if our 
neighbor is willing to sell that which is his, we 
have a right to wish for and purchase that ; but our 
desire must go no further than this. The moment 
we cherish a desire to get from him that with which 
he does not wish to part, we sin. The desire, cher- 
ished, to steal makes a man a thief. 



When an old man, who has spent seventy long 
years in this world, who has seen almost the whole 
of life, and is trembling on the very verge of the 
grave, comes at last to the Saviour, drawn by that 
gracious Spirit that will save unto the uttermost 
rather than permit the prayers of his saints to be in 
vain, I am glad that his soul is saved — glad for his 
sake — glad for the sake of the parents long ago gone 
home, and glad for the sake of the other faithful 
friends who have prayed scores and scores of years 
for his conversion ; but after all, 'tis a mean husi* 
ness. 

This giving all the greenness and efflorescence of 



270 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

one's life — all one's strength and beauty — to the 
devil^ and then, when one has sucked all the plea- 
sures tliat he can get out of sin and the world, 
coming and offering the dregs of his life — his old 
worn-out corn -husk, to the Lord ! 'tis dirt mean ! 
If any of you young people rneditate such a course, 
you will not be likely to be allowed the chance. 



I AM not afraid of a laugh, even in the meeting- 
house, nor on the Sunday, if it come of a right 
spirit. It is often better to laugh than to weep ; 
and to langh in the very presence of our Maker is 
well, if it be the laughter of Abraham, and not the 
scornful and unbelieving laughter of Sarah. 



Why is it, when the coffin is unearthed, and that 
which has lain long within it is exposed, and 
when the father and the mother, bending over it 
with tears and anguish, call tenderly with the soul's 
utmost yearning: "My son! my son!" that tlie 
dust makes no reply ? Why is not the mouldering 
mass moved ? Why does it make no sign, but only 
the nimble worms creep in and out, and the ilo:- 
some dust settles closer together? It is because 
the man is dead. 

Why is it, when lover calls to lover to return, 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 271 

when the confiding one who has believed in man, 
as she should believe alone in her God, and has 
been rewardedr—di^ man rewards — pleads with the 
miscreant who has stolen from her her store of love, 
making no requital, when her tear-dimmed eyes 
and quivering lips beseech him, when all her soul 
is poured before him, -and she utters her hopeless 
cry in his very ear, does he not pity and regard 
her? It is because the wretch is dead, dead. 
Dead to all that lifts him above the brute ; dead to 
whatever is not earthly, sensual, devilish.' And 
God calls to men, he wooes them, he entreats them, 
and they answer not, nor hear, because, as he 
declares, '' They are dead in trespasses and sins." 



The man who designedly wins the love of a 
woman when he knows that he either cannot or 
ought not fully to requite it — there is not an evil 
thing on the earth or beneath it that is so base a 
knave as he. 



When you come to Christ you must come as an 
offender — you must be sorry for your sins, and per- 
fectly willing to give them all up, or he will never 
receive you. Suppose a man were to strike a child, 
or a sick man, or a feeble woman, everybody would 
cry '' shame !" But if he, upon reflection, grew 



272 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

ashamed, and went humbly and confessed his fault, 
and tried all in his power to make up for it, men 
would let him up. If, however, the man who struck 
happened to be one of your consistent men, obstinate 
and conceited (whose consistency is not in never do- 
ing wrong, but in never confessing it), he won't re- 
pent, nor atone. He will say, " Well, I did it, and 
it must remain^^ The world will call that man a 
brute. In these things the judgment of the world 
is that of Christ. 

Suppose a man were to call upon the physician 
and say, " Well, sir, I want your services." 

" Are you sick ?" says the physician. 

" No ; not that I know of." 

" What, then, do you want of me ?" 

" Oh ! I want your services." 

"But what for?" 

The man makes no reply. 

" Are you in pain ?" 

"No." 

" Is your head out of order ?" 

"No." 

" Nor your stomach ?" 

" No ; I believe not. I feel perfectly well ; but 
still I thought I should like a little of your help." 

What would a doctor think of such a case as this ? 
What must Christ think of those that ask his help, 
not feeling that they really need it ? 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 273 

The Jews were as pious as people are now-a-days. 
They hated everybody that didn't belong to their 
church. They looked upon the Oanaanites just as 
we look on infidels, heathens, and abolitionists. 



I THINK that one reason for my great love for 
trees, and flowers, and birds is, that through the 
gentle ministrations of these things I was taught a 
better way of prayer than any which before I had 
known. I found my way to God stepping on the 
soft green leaves, and lifted by the songs of birds. 



When men complain to me of low spirits, I tell 
them to take care of their health, to trust in the 
Lord, and to do good^ as a cure. 



Man's face is a disturbed face ; it shows that in 
his soul there is no rest, not even in his home. 
Disquiet is with him in the broodings of the night, 
and repose comes not with the flush of morning. 



Attempt to be aristocratic in the church, and the 
church dies. Its true power consists in cutting the 
loaf of society from top to bottom. 

12* 



274 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

Time is to lis as a beleaguering army; parallel 
after parallel is drawn around us, and ever and 
anon we see an enemy's flag waving over 
some outwork. Charge after charge is made 
against us ; and as sight, and hearing, and touch, 
fail before the assaulting army, O woe to man if 
he has no hereafter as a final citadel into which to 
retreats 



Ask any man and he will tell you, " I expect to 
live again." All men believe it ; but this cold 
faith of the head is a different thing from that cer- 
tainty which sometimes thrills through the heart, 
and makes us long for the future life, as a school- 
boy longs for his father's house. 



There is a pass beyond which no man's honor 
can go. Beware the narrow and intense moment 
of the pressure of temptation. 



• It is time we were done talking of death as 
" The Great Tyrant," " The Enemy," etc. Death- 
it is only God's call, " Come home." It is but the 
messenger to bring them home sent to homesick 
children at a boarding-school ; or the permission to 
return to his native land sent to an exile. 



LIVING WORDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 276 

Religion is the Bread of Life. I wish we better 
appreciated the force of this expression. I remem- 
ber what bread was to me when I was a boy. I 
could not wait till I was dressed in the morning, 
but ran and cut a slice from the loaf — all the way 
round, too, to keep me nntil breakfast; and at 
breakfast, if diligence in eating earned wages, I 
should have been well paid. And then I could not 
wait for dinner, but ate again, and then at dinner ; 
and I had to eat again before tea, and at tea, and 
lucky if 1 didn't eat again after that. It was bread, 
bread, all the time with me, bread that I lived on 
and got strength from. Just so religion is the 
bread of life ; but you make it cake — ^j^ou put it 
away in your cupboard and never use it but when 
you have company. You cut it into small pieces 
and put it on china plates, and pass it daintily 
round instead of treating it as bread; common, 
hearty bread, to be used every hour. 



A man's ledger does not tell what he is worth. 
Count what is in a man, not what is on him, if you 
would know whether he is rich or poor. 



Love that has no fear of God is always false and 
weak. . 



276 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

Of all impotent creatures, man is weakest, when 
he attempts by his own strength to put himself 
down. It is ocean trying to put down waves with 
waves. No storms are like the storms that rise 
when man attempts to conquer his passions. 



There are men standing high in the church, their 
hands have borne about the broken bread, and the 
dripping, blood betokening wine to their compan- 
ions. They are careful to observe the Sabbath and 
the prayer-meeting, and do their part well in public, 
stated generosities ; but under all they bear a heart 
that is hard, grasping, avaricious. In the world 
they carry themselves so that they grind and bruise 
all that stands in their way. They are proud, sel- 
fish, supplanting, envious, malicious — they are mean. 
There is no worse word than that. When you have 
descended so low in language, the hottom falls out. 
For such a character as the one I have just de- 
scribed I cannot express my utter contempt and 
loathing. 

When a man gives proof that his heart is sound, 
and that his life is sound, there is no divergence of 
opinion that should keep us from fellowship with 
him. I am sensitive in behalf of theologies ; but 
when theology puts its hoot upon the living, pal- 
pitating heart, my heart cries out against it 



LIVING WORDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 277 

Those truths which, though rugged, have gripe in 
them, have in themselves presumptive evidence of 
their truth. We are to have toleration, but not of 
falsehood, nor that which is founded on indiffer- 
ence to the truth. It makes all the difference be- 
tween life and death, between destruction and sal- 
vation, what a man believes. Because a man 
sincerely believes there is no chasm before him, 
when there is one there, will God the sooner save 
that man's neck if he goes forward ? 



Most of the religious controversies are of details. 
The great denominations now stand apart from each 
other on grounds which, by their own general con- 
fession, do not touch the individual Christian cha- 
racter. 



If there was no grit in a grindstone, how long 
would the axe be in grinding ? and if affairs had no 
pinch in them, when would there be made a man ? 
How can a man walk by faith, unless compelled to 
go where he cannot see ? 



The most powerful way of teaching truth is to 
show what it has done for you. 



278 LIVING W('.>DS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPll'. 

Sentimental aspirations alter goodness may be 
very well in their way ; but it takes more than 
these to make a saint. A man (or a woman) may 
sit and read the Bible all day, and cry over it, and 
think how precious and holy it is, and how good 
God is, and then may go away and pray all night ; 
but if the reading, and reflection, and praying, 
don't make a better man of him — if their effect is 
not to brighten and sweeten his disposition, and 
make him more kind and loving to God's creatures 
that are in his company, or in his power — if he can 
shut his Bible, and turn with scowling brow and 
unpitying heart to the orphan or the stranger within 
his gates, he has the very spirit -of the Pharisee. 
He that loves God let him love his brother also. 



God works by the church just as far as he can, 
but when she makes herself stiff or shallow, his 
workings overflow and run in a hundred ducts be- 
sides. 



Those who think that the whole army of human 
deeds must go roaring through the thoroughfares 
of life whelming men in the general rush, and that 
no Sabbath notice must be taken of it — who make 
the pulpi'j too holy, and the Sabbath too sacred, to 
be used in bringing individual courses and develop 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 279 

ments of society to the bar of God's word for trial, 
are the lineal descendants of those Jews who con- 
sidered the Sabbath so sacred that our Saviour 
desecrated it by healing the withered hand. Would 
God he could appear to his church in this our 
day and heal withered hearts. 



The world was made what it is that you might 
be made what you ought to be. Your daily duties 
are a part of your religious life just as much as 
your devotions are. 



Because our impressions are right we have no 
business to flash them, unpreparedly and unad- 
visedly, in the faces of men. 



The firm skull must conform to the growth of the 
brain, the softest mass in the whole body. So laws 
and institutions, however hard they may seem, must 
yield and fashion themselves according to the 
growth of the national character. 



"When God means to make a man useful in the 
world, he generally sends him first through fire — 
he puts him into the forge and onto the anvil — and 
often he chastens most whom he loves best. 



280 LIVING WOKDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

Men confound earnestness and solemnity. A 
man may be very much in earnest and not be very 
solemn; or he ujay be awfully solemn without a 
particle of earnestness. A solemn nothing is just 
as wicked as a \vitty nothing. A man may be a 
repeater of stale truisms, he may smother living 
truths by conventional forms and phrases, but if he 
put on a very solemn face, and employ very solemn 
gestures before an audience of sound men — men 
soundly asleep, at least — that will pass for decorous 
handling of God's truth. The difference between 
Christ and his contemporary teachers was that he 
spoke live truths with the power of his own life in 
their utterance. The rabbins spoke old orthodoxy, 
dead as a mummy ; but they spoke it very reve- 
rently ; they never violated any professional propri- 
ety ; they never forgot how to move, how to speak, 
how to maintain professional dignity. They forgot 
nothing except living truths and living souls. 
"What if they did not do any good ? What if every- 
body died about them ? What if they never had 
any fruit ? They charged that all to divine sove- 
reignty. 

Young Christians often get discouraged, and 
think that they bear no fruit, and shall be cut off. 
They see that Christ promised his disciples that 
he would dwell in them, and that they shall bear 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 281 

much fruit. Christ did not mean that fruit should 
come at once, all ripened. Remember to whom he. 

spoke men who were for years after this getting 

it through their heads that he was to die for them. 
It was twenty years before the fruit grew upon 
them that we find clustering in the epistles ; and 
then only two or three of them had anything to do 
out of their own time. 

When the gardener looks in the spring to see if 
the branches of his vines are alive, he is satisfied if 
he sees the tip of the most tiny bud — ^he don't call 
that a dead branch. There was but one of the 
disciples that seemed much changed for the better, 
during the life of Christ — that was John. He was 
one of those persons who, soft and velvety outside, 
have in them a core of granite, who, under a 
smooth aspect, carry the charge of thunder. He 
was the one who wanted to call down fire from 
heaven to burn up the people who had ofiended 
his Master. His affections, when not disturbed, 
were tender and sweet; but thwarted, he grew 
bitter as gall. Yet he came at last to that gentle- 
ness of character, by which he is now known ; and, 
after a score of years, grew able to pen those fer- 
vent letters, so remarkable for ringing all the 
changes of love. Indeed John seems to have forgot 
every word in the language but " love." It is not 
:n one year, nor five, nor ten, that you will ripen. 



282 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

But you are dissatisfied, and you sit down and 
try to think how Christ looks, and try to feel that 
he is with you ; and you take the Bible, expecting 
that now you are converted, it will shine out at you 
like' a house whose windows are illuminated. 
Christ will not reveal himself to you in that way, 
and that is not the manner in which the Bible will 
be a light to you. You must make it " the man of 
your counsel." What a word is that! what an 
idea it gives you of how you should use the 
Bible. 

A. man ofl:ers you a note. You are not quite 
sure about it. You say to him: ''I don't know. 
Hold on ; I'll let you know in half an hour ;" and 
away you run, round the corner. Your lawyer 
lives near by. Tou show him the note. "Such a 
one ofiered me this. I thought I'd just speak to 
you about it. What would* you do?" "Better 
have nothing to do with it," says the lawyer, shak- 
ing his head. You run back, and say to the man : 
" I've concluded not to take that note." • 

Then some transaction is urged upon you. You 
hesitate. You don't know exactly whether it will 
stand in law : " Wait," you say, " wait a minute — 
I can't decide yet," and away you go, roand the 
corner. " Oh, yes," says your lawyer, " that's all 
perfectly right and safe ;" and back you run, and 
the matter is settled. He is the "man of your 



LIVING WORDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 283 

counsel." Just in this way should you consult the 
Bible, in regard to all the actions of your life. You 
may read all 3^our life in it, and never get the 
meaning out of half its texts ; for I think that 
many texts of Scripture are long in their periods, 
like comets, and only cast their light upon us 
when the appointed time comes ; but unlike the 
comet, when once they have risen upon our hori 
zon, they leave it no more, but their splendoi 
burns on bright unto the end. There are texts 
which I got into twenty years ago, and I'm not half 
through them yet. 

Christian graces are not in the Bible. The 
Bible tells us what they are ; but it is in the strug- 
gle of life that we are to find them. A book of 
tactics is good to teach the soldier evolutions, but 
it is the parade ground and the battle-field that 
makes veterans. Men can make an idol of the Bible. 



Each one of our faculties, when well cultivated, 
becomes an interpreter of God, a window through 
which we can look out and see God. Take benevo- 
lence; in its natural state 'tis mere good-nature, 
not much of a window then ; but when you have 
exercised and trained it, until you see the inter- 
est of another lying side by side, on the same 



284 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

plane with yours, and can choose that first, doing 
good to another rather than to yourself; when you 
give up rest, and comfort, and health itself; when 
you Uncomplainingly endure martyrdom and cruci- 
fixion for the sake of your nervous, and sick, and 
fretful children, who have wound you up, and ruu 
you down, and almost worn you out, then your 
benevolence shows you what kind of feeling was 
Christ's when he suffered and died for you. 



It is all very well to have a minister to preach 
about religion ; but you get used to him. I stand 
here, and say over and over to you the same things 
till I wear the year smooth. Every Christian who 
has come to a realization of Christ, is a natural 
and appointed preacher of him. You all know 
what is the effect here, when from one part of the 
room and another, men rise to corroborate each 
other's witness to the truth and effects of religion. 
Kow, if the church would make the week a witness 
that should answer back and confirm the Sahl'ith; 
if you, in all your places of business, abouc the 
streets, everywhere, would but corroborate, by 
word and deed, in spirit and in truth, all the truths 
that I utter from the pulpit; if the young convert 
would call to the companions that he has left in the 
world, and the more advanced Christian would 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 285 

encourage the young one, and the white-haired 
saint again stand on the heights, and call : " Come 
up, come ; from where we stand can be seen the 
gates of the Holy City," how would the influence 
of the church be felt, and how would be hastened 
the conversion of the world ! 



"When we begin to climb a hill, 'tis hard work ; 
we begin to puflF, our legs begin to ache, and by 
the time we reach the top of the hill, we are pretty 
well tired out. But once up, we begin to descend, 
and now we wonder that we could have made so 
much ado about our climbing. We resolve that 
we never will do so again. And we shall not until 
the next time. But when another hill is to be 
ascended, it will be the same thing over, unless we 
resolve with something more than the ordinary 
firmness of men. 

There are hills in the moral as well as in the 
natural world, and we manage worse about the 
former than the latter. 



How few people there are who have a really 
trusting spirit. 'Tis easy enough to trust, in regard 
to things you don't care anything about ; but upon 
the point where you are most sensitive, how far do 



286 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOTTTEI PULPrr. 

you trust in God, and not worry? Have you, 
within five years, learned to trust j^ourself and 
your property, and the liealth and life of those 
dearest to you, with God, in a settled confidence 
that he will do what is best with all ? And can you 
be cheerful in this trust? The husbandman goes 
often to examine whether his fruit ripens fast. You 
are spiritual husbandmen, and should do likewise. 
It is astonishing, as one walks the streets, to see 
how few good-looking people there are. Very rare 
is it to see a luminous, transparent face, open and 
trustful. There are such natures, but they are 
rare. There are some people that can trust God 
about everything, but their soul's salvation. 



When a hunter goes out to hunt, he seldom finds 
all that he hits. * But going about the woods the 
next day, he finds here a buck, there a turkey, and 
something else elsewhere. "Ah!" he says, "I 
thought I brought down more game than I found 
yesterday. Here it is now." As I go about the 
country lecturing, I am so frequently being met by 
persons who say to me, shaking my hand : " I was 
converted among you. I have reason to know 
YOU, though you don't know me," that I am begin' 
ning to feel that, on these jaunts, I only go % little 
wider into my own field of jurisdiction. Lately i 



LIVrNO WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 287 

was struck by the gratitude and humility of a 
mother whose son came last winter to New York. 
With parting injunctions and prayers, the mother 
very earnestly warned her boy to keep out of dan- 
gerous places ; and, especially to be sure and not go 
near that wicked place, Henry Ward Beecher's 
church. She made this such a particular object of 
her caution, that, of course, the young man came. 
He was converted, and returned to his mother so 
changed, that she, too, was converted. When I 
was there, she, from gratitude, had gone over as far 
one way, as she had been the other ; and was feel- 
ing very bad to think she had judged ill of one, 
who, since he was the instrument of her dear son's 
conversion, must be so very good a man. I do 
feel that the influence of this church is wide. 
There will hardly be, ere long, a town in the land 
that will not have branches from us. How humble 
and how careful ought they who exert so wide- 
spreading an influence to be. 



When I dig a man out of trouble, the hole that 
he leaves behind him is the grave where I bury 
my own trouble. 

There are some assertions of Scripture which 
imply high attainments in the whole round ol 



288 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

Christian character. " If any man offend not in 
word, the same is a perfect man ;" that is, if a man 
has obtained that self-command which shall enable 
him never to say a wrong thing, the battle with 
him is nearly over. He may reckon it already won. 



'' God so loved the world that he gave his only 
begotten Son," etc. The life and death of Christ 
was but the working out of the love of God. The 
affection and the yearning of heart towards his 
erring creatures, was just the same in God before 
Christ came, that Christ showed it to be while he 
was on earth. It is just the same still. There is no 
change in God, or in his love. Man, nor woman, 
need fear disappointment there. It has been the 
custom of some, a custom too much prevailing, to 
represent God as being under no manner of obliga- 
tion to do anything for his creatures after they had 
broken his law. The trouble with this statement is 
that there is a great deal of truth in it; and yet it 
has been made in such a manner as to give a very 
wrong impression. In God's own nature there is 
a necessity for his efforts for man's redemption. 
Where is the earthly father, worthy to bear the 
name, who would not feel that it was as much his 
duty as his desire to do all in his power to restore to 
the paths of honor and honesty a child who had 
fallen ? And, shall we imagine that God, the Infi- 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 289 

nite Father, is under less obligations to do good to 
the creatures he has made than we are ? or that the 
laws by which his nature are governed are directly 
the reverse of those which he has imprinted in our 
souls ? " God is so great !" say some ; and they 
hold up that greatness — sincerely desiring to show 
forth his praise, though mistaken in the* thing 

wherein lies his greatest glory till they seat 

him on a throne so high that no man can touch 
even its base ; till they cut him entirely off from 
man's sympathy. They say he might have jastly 
let the world alone, after its revolt, and have con- 
cerned himself no more about it ; and they declare 
the love and mercy which refused to do so, past 
finding out — a mystery of love at which mortals 
should forever wonder and adore. Yes, he might 
have let his rebels alone, in such a way that there 
would have been no propagation of the condemned 
ana hopeless race ; but that he did not do this, can 
any heart that is a parent's marvel? Man can 
understand God, when God has given, in his own 
breast, the key which can unlock his mysteries — 
made in the image of God. 

God is great ! but in proportion to his greatness 
is his love, and his obligation to do good. No 
being in the wide universe is so marked out and 
oelted around with " ought " — with obligations to 
rectitude, as is the Almighty. 

13 



290 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PLLPIT. 

Because he is mighty and high is not the reason 
why he has a right to make conditions, and mark 
out the bounds of men — ^but because his. wisdom 
and his goodness are so great. It is for their own 
sake^ as well as for his, that God would have men 
serve him ; for all good and all happiness are inevi- 
tably connected with his service. This is in the 
nature of things. He loves every one of us with a 
warmer and heartier love than that which it is pos- 
sible for the fondest of our human friends to feel for 
us ; and all his desires and all his commands are for 
our eternal good. His help is so often promised 
that men have got an idea that it is some nearly 
impossible thing one has to do in order to become 
a Christian ; but this is wrong. The help that we 
need is already with each one of us. In every 
man's hand God hath put a price with which to get 
wisdom, and if he does not obtain it, he will have 
none but himself to blame. We are asked to do 
nothing but what we can do, and do do every day, 
only not towards God. "Who does not often feel 
the sense of guilt ? Who is there that has not often 
regretted a wrong act ? Who is there that has not 
faith in things unseen ? Who is there that has no 
power to love that which is lovely ? 

My hearers, if it should be that any of you stand 
unfriended at the judgment, unclothed and shiver- 
ing before the Judge, it will not be his voice alone 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 291 

that you will hear pronouncing sentence against 
you. Your own understanding, your own conscience 
and social affections, even your own worldly Wisdom, 
will cry out that your ruin was needless, that it was 
only because you would not that you was not saved. 



The more refined and elevated men are, the more 
sensitive are they — the more is expected from them. 
A thing that you would pass without notice in a 
low, ignorant person, you would expect and de- 
mand apology for in a person higher on the social 
plane. Man, as well as God, exacts from man 
according to that which he hath. 



The present time with men, is as the sight ol a 
rifle. They look through it to see what is before 
them. 



Changes of motive and purpose are often in- 
stantaneous ; but it may take years to get all the 
conduct in exact agreement with that changed 
mind. Suppose that the men on board a pirate 
vessel began to falter in their purpose, and to talk 
to each other about becoming honest seamen. By 
and by. having consulted all but the captain, they 
conclude to refer the whole matter to him ; and if 



292 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

he consents they will all abandon the life of 
pirates. 

They surround their captain, and make known to 
him their thoughts. "The whole thing depends on 
you, captain ; what do you say ?" 

The captain thinks and thinks — ^he shakes his 
head. " I don't know, boys, about this. If we be- 
gin to be honest men, we must hold out so ; and 
perhaps we can't. And then we may get caught 
and punished for what we have done. Still, I don't 
know. I guess we will give up this way of life — we 
— I suppose WQ had better decide to do so — we wilV^ 

It was done — at that instant the men had ceased 
to be pirates. True, the black flag still swung from 
their mast ; the last blood was hardly washed from 
their decks ; they had been fitted out to attack and 
plunder the West Indian islands; and they were 
still full of the implements of death. But no mat- 
ter, they were no longer pirates, any more than 
when they had pulled down the flag, cast away 
their weapons, and entered upon their lawful voyage. 



The Lord's Prayer stops at "deliver us from 
evil." The doxology, though excellent, is gener- 
ally admitted to be an interpolation. Who may 
pray? May the Christian? certainly. It has been 
considered that prayer was a privilege peculiarly 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PgLPIT. 293 

that of the saint. This is an error. Whoever has 
a ica/nt, may pray. Has not the man in the fire 
or in the flood, a right to cry out for help, regard- 
less of his character ? What ! may the sinner ad- 
dress God? Well, if "the sinner" may not, who 
in this wide world may ? But " the sacrifice of the 
wicked is an abomination to the Lord,'' says Scrip- 
ture. That passage has been wrested till it has 
been made the means of the loss of many souls ; it 
has gone up and down the earth, destroying like a 
sword. It is the hypociitical sacrifice that God 
abhors, ^o earnest heart-sent cry is displeasing to 
him. When a man who would twist his neighbor's 
neck for gain, or who for it would thrust his arm 
up to the shoulder in blood, who loves and means 
to continue in the indulgence of riot, uncleanliness 
and wassail, makes his sacrifice, or ofi'ers his prayer 
for the sake of covering his real character ; or, say- 
ing in his heart, " There ! I hope that's enough to 
keep me safe " — that is the abomination of which 
the Bible speaks. 

How should men pray? If any man can best 
approach God, and open his heart to him by means 
of prearranged prayers, in God's name, allow him 
to use them. But the spontaneous utterance of 
thought, feeling and desire is best suited for 
specific cases. Printed prayers are generic. 

By his conduct and his relations, Chtist taught 



294: LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

that it was God's pleasure to be taken firm hold of 
by the soul in prayer. He taught us plainly that 
there are some things which he will give to his 
children if they will plead for them long enough, 
and with suflBcient intensity of desire, and which 
otherwise they shall not have. He enjoined it 
upon us that in prayer we should be, to the last 
degree^ earnest, constant, and importunate. But 
God wants no man to make watch-preparation for 
communion with him. Don't look at your watch, 
and say, " It's noon, or it's six o'clock — I must go 
and pray — whether you've anything to say or not. 
Some men pray three times a day ; they have three 
regular hours. If this suits their case let them, do 
it. Others pray regular oral prayers but once a 
day. There are some birds that sing when the sun 
rises, and then they are done for that day. All 
Christians ought to be much in prayer. They 
should even in secret pray with the voice — for 
the voice helps to fix the thoughts; and no man 
will ever grow much in the grace of prajnng who 
prays in his heart only. Social prayer also is a 
duty and a benefit to the Christian ; but, above all 
things, let them strive to be sincere, simple, and 
natural in prayer. Faults of manner in addressing 
God are not confined to young converts — if so, 
there would be more prospect of having them all 
corrected. The young should beware of falling 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 295 

into these faults. Don't allow yourself to have 
a praying tone, one much higher or lower than 
that which is natural to you. The moment I hear 
a man go up or down an octave in his voice, I am 
left an octave behind. Then some men's voices 
have a roll, they have a swinging undulation like 
the waves of the sea. All this is very unpleasant 
— even revolting to refined taste. 

"When young Christians complain to me that 
their thoughts wander in their devotions, I tell 
them that they pray too much. Pray often, lut 
not too long at a time. I have heard very stam- 
mering, staggering prayers — sprayers that broke 
down in the middle, that were yet real, living 
prayers. Far better are such than those whose 
composition is perfect, but in which words have 
outrun feeling. All the first troubles in regard to 
this intercourse and confidence with God will pass, 
and, by and bj^, the Christian who really desires 
it, will come to live, as it were, in a perpetual 
prayer. He will walk through the days with a 
consciousness that he is " naked and open before 
him with whom he has to do," and he will rejoice 
in that consciousness. Every new event, every 
new emotion of his life will be with him an impulse 
towards God. He must tell it there. His confi- 
dences and his warmest gushes of feeling are con- 
tinually lifting themselves up to the being of his 



296 LIVING WORDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

supreme love and reverence ; and this is to " pray 
without ceasing." When the heart of man attains 
unto this state, he can no more be left comfortless 
or alone, though the grave hide all who love him, 
and though a dungeon shut him from the light of day. 
You will frequently need some preparation for 
prayer. When a man is full of the fretting cares 
of business; sore, smarting, tormented by the 
untoward events of the day, he often feels that he 
is in an unfit state to enjoy communion with his 
Maker. The mind needs some relief before it can 
settle itself to prayer. With me music is one of 
the best aids here. One deep and solemn strain of 
music is enough to separate as far between me and 
any past state of mind, as the Eed Sea separated 
between Pharaoh and the Israelites. 



^ O, God ! we know not what life in heaven is ; 
nor what disposition is made of occupation there ; 
but we know that whatever here is most bright, 
whatever is most beautiful and lovely, what- 
ever is most delightful in experience and most 
pleasing in sensation, is used to excite our imagina- 
tion of the joys that await thy children, and that 
after all these things are exhausted we are told 
that it doth not yet appear what we shall be. 

* The following passages are from prayers by Mr. Beeclier. 



LIVING WOEDS FROM PLTMOUTH PULPIT. 297 

How long, O, Lord! how long? Since thou 
wentest up into heaven, hast thou forgotten the 
earth ? 

Givest thou no more heed to the voice of her 
groaning? 

For eighteen hundred years, since thy departure, 
she has swung round about thy throne, uttering, 
evermore her cries of bitterness and pain. Is it not 
enough ? Oh ! hear the wail of nature, and come, 
Lord Jesus, come quickly. 

Thy coming, and that alone, can redeem us. 
And when thou art here, the waters of bitterness 
will all be turned to sweetness ; and the song of 
earth, as she swings in her orbit, shall be like the 
melody of heaven. 

Our Father, we love thee, though we so often 
grieve thee. Our God, our Saviour, we desire to 
walk in thy love ; why do our feet so constantly 
falter? 

Oh! come unto us, and possess us in every 
faculty of our souls. Abide with us, thou Heavenly 
Guest, and so draw us that we turn from thee no 
more. 

• When we look abroad into the world, and see 
what a place it is ; see how full it is of jangling 
and selfishness ; of violence, of passion and blood ; 
thy Fatherhood, and our brotherhood unacknow- 
ledged, and men everywhere at strife. And when 

13* 



298 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

we look within^ and see the evil there : the lurking 
enemies, crouching in secret places, waiting for us 
to lie down in slumber, or to ungird our armor for 
a moment's rest, that they may spring out and 
assassinate us, we are ready to sink down in despair, 
and cry out that all is lost, and that thou hast 
indeed forsaken us. But we know that thou art 
not gone — that thou art not afar off, and that thou 
dost regard the cry of thy children. 

Then, hear us now, O, God ! while we reach 
out after thee, and are sick for want of thee. Come 
unto us with healing, and speak comfortable things 
anto us, and hasten the salvation of the world. 



When the clouds are over us so black that those 
who know thee not, see in them only wrath and 
destruction, may we, looking up, behold and know 
that thou art near, and that we are only standing in 
the twilight of the shadow of our God. 



May we be over-arched by our faith in Thee ; 
may we stand under it as our shadow and protec- 
tion from all the storms, and sins, and woes of life. 



While we walk through the places of crucifixion 
here, may the thought of our Father''s home sustain 

UB. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 299 

Is our home indeed awaiting us ? Art thou look- 
ing upon us with yearning, and thinking that the 
time draws near when thou raayest call us to thine 
arms ? Dost thou love us, and long for us, oh ! our 
God? for us^ so full of all unquietness and unclean- 
ness, so barren of all loveliness. 

" Oh ! teach us the meaning of that word 
" Love." Teach us, too, that with thee it means 
not less, but more than it does in the truest and 
warmest human heart — that our love is as the 
brook, shallow and defiled, while thine is as the 
ocean flowing to meet the brook, and swallowing 
up all its impurity as though it had not been. 

May the thought of thy tenderness and pity give 
us courage. May it not encourage us to think sin 
less dreadful, but cause us to hate and shun it 
more ; and yet, in spite of all our oft falling and fail- 
ing, to take comfort in thee ; and to struggle, not 
from fear, and to escape thy frown, but with a great 
yearning to get upward nearer and nearer to thy 
smile. 

May the thought of thy love make sin more hate- 
ful and fearful to us than all the thunderings of 
conscience ever did ; and may it look even blacker 
while we feel the throbbings of thy divifie pity, 
than when viewed in the light of thy pure and per- 
fect law. 

Our Father, may grieving thee be the ono 



300 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

terror of our lives. Teach us how to love each 
other, and how, hating all sin, to have mercy 
on the sinner, even as thou dost. Look not upon 
our sins, nor enter into judgment against us, for 
which of us could stand one moment before thee ? 



When we are alone and desolate — forsaken of all 
that makes life dear, be not thou afar off. Be near 
us, O Thou who canst make thyself so much more 
unto us than parents, or brother, or sister, or hus- 
band, or wife, or lover, or friend : for these are but 
sparks struck out from thee. They are only names, 
which, gathered and grouped together, mean God. 



To trust in human love is often to be pierced as 
with thorns ; to lean on human faithfulness is to feel 
the broken shaft enter our side ; but no man ever 
trusted in Thy love and found it gmw cold towards 
him ; no heart ever yearned towards Thee, and 
stayed itself upon Thee, and found Thee unfaithful 
or unkind. 



We pray Thee that Thou wilt give us grace to 
bear with the troubles that are in our daily life. 
What are we that we should ask to go crowned 
with joy when all through the world there is so 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 301 

much sorrow ? We pray thee not so much to take 
away our burdens, not so much to lift from us the 
cross, or to pluck away the thorns, as to show us- how 
patiently and lovingly to bear them. 

Our days are passing ; O God ! that dwellest 
where they sing who have done with weeping ; they 
whom we buried with tears and anguish, but whom 
thou didst raise again with gladness and everlasting 
exaltation ; and hast given them so much more and 
better than we, in our largest and most ardent 
desiresj^know how to ask for them, that they, look- 
ing down from their glorious exaltation, see immea- 
surably below them the dust that we have named 
as blessings ; when it shall be our turn to hear that 
call which men name " death," may we, waking as 
children called by mother's voice at morning, see 
bending above us thy face of eternal beauty and 
infinite love, and feel beneath us thine everlasting 
arms, and break into the first notes of that rap- 
turous song which shall not cease, with our head 
upon thy bosom. 

Be with and bless our friends, wherever they are. 
Scattered abroad in the earth, they are toiling, each 
with his duties and his burdens, and his wearing 
sorrows. We would fain gather them in the bosom 
of our love, O Lord ! and there shelter and give 
them consolation ; but it cannot be ; for our hearts 



302 LIVING W( :DS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

are filled with their own burdens and sorrows, and 
they are powerless to bear even these alone — how 
then shall we help our brothers ; but what is our 
love and pity when compared with thine ? And, are 
they not all beneath the shadow; nay, in the sun- 
shine of thy care ? and canst thou, without whom 
not a sparrow's strength faileth, permit any heart 
that stays itself on thee to be broken by its trouble ? 
Thou wilt never leave us nor forsake us ; and they 
that are ours by love are parts of our own soul, and 
the promise and the covenant is for thett. also. 
Therefore, O our God ! we commit those united to 
us, yet, by space, divided from us, into thy faithful 
and tender keeping, and we 'know that they are 
safe. 



Our* souls rejoice, O Thou blessed one ! when 
we feel ourselves drawn towards Thee, for it is not 
in us to rise ; and when our thoughts are all tending 
with sweet affection towards heaven, we know that 
there have been solicitations, and that God hath 
yearned for us, and hath sent forth ministering in- 
fluences to waken love, and lift our souls towards 
him. ' And as the sun doth draw up all vapors, and 
wreathe the mountain tops therewith, so in Thy 

* A Prayer from a Phonographic Report in the American Pulpit, 
by Prof. Henry Fowler. 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 303 

high and holy place— yea, towards Mount Zion 
above. Thou, with sweet and blessed looking, dost 
di'aw our affections ; and our hearts to-day exhale 
towards Thee. 

For though we have not seen Thee, we know 
Thee, Thou mighty one ! Though we have never 
beheld Thee in outward form and guise, our hearts 
have taken hold upon Thee. 

The hand that was pierced for us hath never been 
laid upon us in our path ; nor have those sacred 
wounded feet crossed our threshold ; but that heart, 
that mind of Thine, the soul of God^ hath crossed 
the threshold of our dwellings ; and with our hearts, 
full often, we have had communion with Thee, as 
friend with friend. 

And in the times of darkness, and of temptation, 
we have wrestled with Thee, even as the Patriarch 
of old, and thou hast given us victories, which the 
tongue may not mention, but which the heart will 
think of with joy and everlasting gratitude. 

In times when affliction seemed to dissolve us — 
when our heart was as fruit about to drop from the 
bough, when there was no more strength by which 
to lay hold upon life, thou hast come. Thou blessed 
one ! and given us strength again to lay hold on 
life, and to be happy in life, and to rise above the 
darkness of personal distress, and the struggle and 
the conflict of immingled evils. We have been 



304: LIVING WOKDS FKOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

fearful of dangers ; but afterwards Thou hast made 
us to laugh, as children laugh when alarmed and 
then looking back, see that it was but the shaking 
of a leaf. And when things have seemed to settle 
around us in darkness, and troubles have come 
thick upon us, Thou hast lifted us up, and put our 
feet upon a rock, where no tide could reach us and 
no wave could dash against us, and no flood could 
sweep with destroying eddies about ns, to unsettle 
our peace, or do us harm in thought or feeling. 

And we have been made masters that before 
were servants to our circumstances. We have 
been able to stand undaunted and to beat back 
troubles that came .upon us. Thou hast lifted us up 
from sorrows, from violence, from unexpected evil. 
When periods of dismay have come drifting in upon 
us like diffused mist, cold and chill — those days of ^ 
doubt when we could see nothing, when the pall of 
silence lay upon everything, then, likewise. Thou 
hast manifested thyself unto us. Thou hast given 
us, at last, a sweet patience to stand still, and 
to wait J and we have found that waiting by 
thy side is better than running alone ; and that to 
be empty and weak, for Christ's sake, is better than 
to be full for our own sake. 

We rejoice that Thou hast, in a thousand ways, 
manifested thyself to us in all the desires and yearn- 
ings of our hearts. We have looked out upon life 



LIVING WORDS ijrlOM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 305 

Bometimes with joy, and then with a sweet sadness, 
because, after all, there was so little in it that its 
brightness grew dim almost before it flashed its 
brightness forth ; and we have been glad of 
it. 

We thank Thee that Thou hast addressed thy-, 
self to us by our nobler thoughts, and redeemed 
the world from emptiness and given it back to us 
when we have yielded it to Thee, crowned and 
glorified. Thou hast made the things that are 
round about us — the very flowers that perish — the 
leaves that wither and drop away, the changes of 
the season — to be the teachers and Thy preachers 
to our souk. 

But these things alone do not content us ; for 
they are things of the lower life, and we have 
yearned for that which we have not. We have had 
divine incitements ; we have had blessed inspira- 
tions ; when all that we knew seemed so fragment- 
ary, and all that we were so exceedingly little and 
less than fragmentary ; when we have felt that our 
afi'ections were so cold and ignoble ; when from a 
thought of our own ungratefulness and selfishness 
and pride, we have turned to the bright vision of 
thy love — so sweet, so lasting, so deep, so gentle, 
so delicate beyond all expression from human 
tongue ; when we have seemed to ourselves to be 
so coarse, so low, so ignoble, that we scarcely could 



306 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

lift up our eyes unto Thee. But Thou, O blessed 
one ! hast been pleased to look upon us out of the 
brightness and radiance of thine own perfections. 
Out of the depth and purity and sweetness of 
Thine own love. Thou hast looked forgivingly upon 
our rudeness, and our hollowness, our pride, our 
selfishness, our jealousy; and hast uttered to our 
souls promises that we should not always be thus 
— that if we would have faith Thou wouldst 
have patience ; and that Thou wouldst bring us on- 
ward and upward, step by step, shining brighter 
and brighter unto the perfect day. 

Lord Jesus, Thou wilt not forsake one word Thou 
hast ever uttered. Thou wilt not betray one single 
hope or expectation in our hearts which Thou hast 
ever suggested ; and all which Thou hast promised 
Thou wilt not only do, but exceeding abundantly 
more. Thou wilt outrun our most fruitful con- 
ceptions ; Thou wilt be more gentle than our heart 
has felt in its most raptured moments ; Thou wilt 
be more patient than our utmost conceptions of 
patience ; Thou wilt be more full of love and good- 
ness than our loftiest aspirations. 

We rejoice that there is in Thee such infinite 
goodness, and such height, and length, and 
breadth, and depth of mercy. 

Still, we are not willing to be sinful, or low, or 
ignorant, or poor, because of Thy goodness ; though 



LIVING WORDS FROM PLrMOUTH PULPIT. 307 

we have a strange wonder of gladness that we are 
weak, because it sets forth to lis such glories in 
Thee, thou nourishing God ! patient with us, as a 
nurse is patient with her children ! 

Yea ! Thou hast thyself declared that the mother 
shall forget her nursing child sooner than Thou wilt 
forget those whom Thou dost love. We take the 
promise that is in Thy declarations and we set it 
against the darkness of time and trouble, and 
weighing down of heart with sadness, and we lift 
ourselves by this divine help above them all. 
When we stand under the darkest cloud, we see 
the bow of promise, and we know that God will 
not suffer the soul that loves him to be over- 
whelmed by any deluge. 

And now may we have these bright days more 
frequently, so that their shining may cast a twi- 
light into the dark days that intervene. As they 
that watch in the night shall behold the glow- 
ing light of morning reaching up the hillsides, 
mounting the highest cliffs, and coming down into 
the valleys beyond, so mayest thou who watchest 
for us, see that the light of hope and the glory of 
God is more and more perfectly enwrapping our 
whole experience. For it is Thy work, blessed 
Saviour ; we are being fashioned by Thy hand, and 
for thy sake, as well as for our own. Thou art yet 
to present us spotless before the throne of Thy 



308 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

Father, and heaven is to resound with acclamations 
for our sake, and for Thy sake. 

Thou, Lord Jesus! thou who art mighty over all 
things, and with whom we are fellow-heirs, we 
rejoice that in all the things that we ask for our- 
selves there is also thine own interest, and thine 
own glory and joy enwrapped ! 

Now, we beseech of Thee that Thou wilt speak 
peaceably unto every heart in Thy presence this 
morning, according to our various necessity. If 
there be those here that do not know their own 
trouble, but only know that they are troubled — 
Thoic Jcnowest, and thou canst enter in, and make 
the darkest chamber of their heart serene with 
liglit and peace. We beseech of Thee that thou 
wilt sustain those who are bearing the pressure of 
aflB-iction. Thou thyself didst bear aflB-iction for 
them. Thou wert acquainted with grief. And 
may they look up, while their tears flow, into* the 
face of Him who wept, who lived, who suffered, 
who died for them and for their consolation. 

Grant Thy blessings to those who are suiroring 
the bafiiings and trials of poverty. Lord, arc they 
poorer than thou wert, who hadst not where to lay 
thy head ? Yet, so far as is consistent with their 
good, alleviate their trouble ; raise them up friends 
and comforts of life. 

Bless all those that are tried in their worldly 



LIVING WOKDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 309 

affairs ; who, whatever way they turn, find fears 
prevailing. Will the Lord be gracious unto them 
that they may not think their life consisteth in the 
abundance of the things which they possess. May 
they feel that the things of this life and all the 
troubles that harass it pass quickly away; and may 
they also feel that they are not in any wise ruined, 
or overturned. M^y they lay up their treasures 
where no misfortunes may ever assail. May they 
believe in Him who is rich beyond all bankruptcy. 
We beseech of thee that thou wilt be very near to 
all that are in doubt of mind, and are perplexed in 
their thoughts and belief of things religious. Do 
Thou teach them the greatest of all truth — how to 
love God^ and how to diffuse that love upon men. 
And may they,' at last, find encouragement in this, 
that Thou art their God. 

We beseech of Thee, that to all those who are in 
the trust of this life's prosperities, who are sur- 
rounded with friends and comforts, and who have 
been blessed abundantly. Thou wilt grant humil- 
ity, that they may not become proud, nor hard 
and unfeeling towards those who are less successful 
and skillful than they ; and by so much as they are 
above them, may they see to it not only that they 
use their goods, but also their hearts and minds for 
the benefit of their fellow-men. 

Be near to strangers in our midst, whose hearts 



310 LIVING WORDS FROM PLYMOUTH PULPIT. 

yearn for those who have been wont to worship 
with them. "Will the Lord bring them by faith 
very near. And as they meet at the foot of the 
cross, may they consciously be united to all who 
love the Lord Jesus, and whom they love. 

Diffuse the blessings of the Gospel over all the 
earth. May slavery cease ; may war cease ; may 
intemperance cease ; may justice reign, and love 
upon justice; and may the whole earth be filled 
with the glory of God ! We ask it for Christ's sak€\ 
Amen. 



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